Artist	Song
Ladybug Transistor	This Old Chase
Jens Lekman	Do You Remember the Riots?
Iron & Wine	Kingdom of the Animals
Badly Drawn Boy	Four Leaf Clover
Ben Lee	Ripe
The Wombats	Let's Dance to Joy Division
Apples in Stereo	Go
The Revelations	You're the Loser
The Primitives	Secrets
Rilo Kiley	Breakin' Up
P.J. Otaku	Punk Rock Ukulelist
Mercury Rev	Holes
Great Lakes Myth Society	Isabella County, 1992
Simple Kid	Lil' King Kong
Polytechnic	Cold Hearted Business
The Rentals	Last Romantic Day
The Go! Team	The Wrath of Marcie
The New Pornographers	All the Old Showstoppers
VHS or Beta	Can't Believe a Single Word
YACHT	We're Always Waiting
Irene	Baby I Love Your Way
Jens Lekman	A Little Lost
Andrew Bird	Scythian Empire (Fingerlings 3 version)
Pinback	Off by 50
Friends of Dean Martinez	Twilight Sleep
Tom Petty	A Higher Place
Belle and Sebastian	The Boy with the Arab Strap
The Shins	Nothing at All
Shout Out Louds	South America

Comment:

Had to edit this down from about 48 tracks, but luckily in retrospect many of them either weren't good enough to keep this company or not easy enough for me to contrive blending them in with the rest (they'll be saved for future mixes, I guess). Basically more indie pop although not altogether deliberately. As ever, there's truckloads of fine new music these days - Jens Lekman and Sam Beam have terrific albums coming out soon, the Shout Out Louds are considerably more appealing (to me) this time around than with "Howl Howl", The Go! Team is solid, Ben Lee is looking good, and Rilo Kiley are laying out a bunch of wholly pleasurable pop songs (now whether I respect them for this radical change in direction is another matter). Hell, even Pinback scored a spot here, and I avoided them as much as possible last time around.

- Critics are being unfairly harsh on VHS or Beta, I think - they're just following in the footsteps of other disco/rock fad bands these days, and do so pretty decently.

-I tried to avoid repeating artists since I had so much to choose from this time, but that 2nd Jens track, "A Little Lost", is from an Arthur Russell cover EP he put together, and just the opening cascade of some kind of bottle percussion mixed with a harp or something is absolutely gorgeous, so I couldn't resist it. In the end it fills out the gentle, contemplative side of this mix

-that Shins song is a b-side from "Wincing the Night Away" and pretty much the most upbeat, instantly catchy song they've ever done. Even has handclaps! Doesn't belong on "Wincing" (good call) but deserves better than bonus track status

All in all, another festive music night(s, for the next several weeks) at Mike's house :)

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