I’ve curated one holiday-related song into my December playlist, and it’s right there at the top. On the one hand, there are plenty of other places to go for a more generous helping of holiday tunes, if that’s what you’re craving. But I also wanted attention paid to this most humane of seasonal compositions, that it shouldn’t get lost in a candy-coated flow of generic Christmas-ing. “The Christians and the Pagans” by Dar Williams comes to us in 2023 like a long-lost if slightly time-addled friend, a song about personal connection and tolerance, told with open-hearted humor, that reminds us how much these qualities have been shoved aside by the social-media-fueled, extremist-friendly madness that has ruled our collective lives for the past decade. On the one hand, this a straightforward story song with a subtle emotional wallop. (For whatever reason, when Dar sings the line “It’s Christmas and your daughter’s here” I get a lump in my throat, every time. And I’m Jewish.) On the other hand, I read the scene with my 2020s perspective and get a bigger, more intrusive lump in my throat, feeling into the song’s implicit innocence and hopeful fellowship. No one at the dinner table was irrationally angry, no one unwilling to consider another point of view; not unrelatedly, no one at the table was looking at their iPhone, if only because they didn’t exist. Meaning, no one in that world was busy taking pictures of themselves, or insulting strangers from a distance, or blatantly ignoring the people they were sharing space with. I grieve the loss of that world when I hear this song. Whatever improvements we have made together since the 1990s seem not necessarily worth the tradeoff.
Beyond the first track, and perhaps the second, there isn’t any holiday material here, although one can always read between the lines. These mixes, as you know, never arrive to present an overarching theme or particular destination; the ongoing intent is, rather, the (ideally) nimble amalgamation of songs from different eras, a willful stream of divergent sounds towards the goal of one inclusive listening experience. This is the year’s last mix, which means that my self-imposed restriction–no artist featured more than once in a calendar year–will reset the next time we meet. At the same time, I’m always seeking to bring in artists each month that haven’t previously been heard here. This month you’ll encounter nine artists who are entirely new to the Eclectic Playlist Series, not featured at all in any mix dating back to 2014.
Here’s the lineup for December; extra notes below the widget:
1. “The Christians and the Pagans” – Dar Williams (Mortal City, 1996)
2. “Thank God the Year is Finally Over” – Paper Route (Thank God the Year is Finally Over EP, 2009)
3. “Townie” – Mitski (Bury Me at Makeout Creek, 2014)
4. “Whole Wide World” – The Rolling Stones (Hackney Diamonds, 2023)
5. “You’ve Been in Love Too Long” – Martha Reeves & The Vandellas (single, 1965)
6. “Getting Away With It” – Electronic (single, 1989)
7. “Cybernaut” – Tonto’s Expanding Head Band (Zero Time, 1971)
8. “Limbs” – Emma Pollock (Watch the Fireworks, 2007)
9. “Fotzepolitic” – Cocteau Twins (Heaven or Las Vegas, 1990)
10. “Broken Wing” – Lowpines (In Silver Halides, 2018)
11. “All I Can Do” – Carpenters (Offering, 1969)
12. “The Book I Read” – Talking Heads (Talking Heads 77, 1977)
13. “Everything Reminds Me of My Dog” – Jane Siberry (Bound By the Beauty, 1989)
14. “Video Game” – Sufjan Stevens (The Ascension, 2020)
15. “Empty Chairs” – Don McLean (American Pie, 1971)
16. “I Remember” – The Roots (Undun, 2011)
17. “Retour a Vega” – The Stills (Wicker Park original soundtrack, 2004)
18. “Take Good Care of Me” – Rachel Sweet (Protect the Innocent, 1980)
19. “Jeff Goldblum” – Mattiel (Georgia Gothic, 2022)
20. “Astral Weeks” – Van Morrison (Astral Weeks, 1968)
Random notes:
* Mitski is a compelling singer and songwriter, fully inhabiting a variety of sonic landscapes. Her first two albums, in the early ’10s, were recorded as school projects while at SUNY Purchase, and veered mostly towards quiet, off-kilter compositions, some piano-driven, others more idiosyncratically scored. For her 2014 label debut, Bury Me at Makeout Creek, she picked up a guitar for the first time and the music in some cases went in new directions. “Townie” is crunchy and catchy and may take you aback a bit if you’re more familiar with her more recent, silkier (but still idiosyncratic) output.
* I like how the Rolling Stones sound on this new record–snappy, interested, even vibrant, with Mick in fine voice. I’m less in love with the songs themselves; with a couple of exceptions, the songwriting strikes me as humdrummy as some of the generic-sounding song titles (“Depending On You,” “Mess It Up,” “Tell Me Straight”). “Whole Wide World,” however, has a bit of musical sparkle to it, to my ears. The riff-based groove is at once clean and dirty, as Stonesy as they come; on the heels of that, the unexpectedly melodic chorus is a bit of a delight. I salute these guys for still making it happen.
* When visiting the various decades, I often seek to find songs from different years in each decade, for variety’s sake. But sometimes two songs from the same year can be just as illustrative of a decade’s variety. Case in point: “Cybernaut” and “Empty Chairs,” both released in 1971, but would one ever suspect? They seem to be coming to us from different planets, never mind different years. “Cybernaut” is the lead track on one of rock’n’roll’s earliest synthesizer albums, while “Empty Chairs” is a warm and organic song featuring only acoustic guitar and voice. “Cybernaut” is forward-looking, mesmerizing groove, “Empty Chairs” evocative nostalgia. Merriam-Webster, by the way, claims that the first known use of the word cybernaut came in 1989. They are apparently not fans of pioneering electronic music outfits, never mind devotees of the classic British spy show The Avengers, the third episode of the fourth season of which was called “The Cybernauts,” and aired in 1965.
* Most people are familiar with the Carpenters for their run of soft-rock mega-hits in the early 1970s, and perhaps also for Karen Carpenter’s tragic trajectory. But before they became chart-toppers and household names, they had recorded an album called Offering, and were credited as Carpenters (no “the”). The LP went nowhere commercially, but was re-released the following year as Ticket to Ride, after their single “Close to You” went to #1 in the summer of 1970. Offering/Ticket to Ride is notable for being performed largely by Karen and Richard themselves (she on drums, he on keyboards) and for featuring Richard on lead vocals on half of the tracks. As you can tell from “All I Can Do,” the sound is rather different from the vibe they presented as the hits started rolling in that next year.
* While there is nothing at all wrong with Bonnie Raitt’s well-known cover of “You’ve Been in Love Too Long,” the Martha Reeves & The Vandellas original is unbeatable.
* The Stills’ song “Retour a Vega,” sung in French, was an early Fingertips favorite, featured originally here in 2004. The band, formed in Montreal in 2000, were something of a big indie deal back in the ’00s, but called it quits in 2011. The song appeared on the soundtrack to the movie Wicker Park, which featured a purposeful lineup of happening indie bands of the moment, including Death Cab for Cutie, Broken Social Scene, and Snow Patrol.
* I am not normally on board with long, repetitive and/or meandering songs, and furthermore have little patience for Van Morrison’s self-important improvisational shtick. And yet, “Astral Weeks”: somehow it all comes together here–the offhand, inscrutable lyrics, the marvelous acoustic groove, the incisive flute accents, the bass line hook, the wild string arrangements, all conspiring to take listeners, nearly against their will, on a seven-minute ride to some other world than our own. It goes on and on and I guess I enter the slipstream, or some such thing, because it feels over in a flash. For those who may be interested in more background about this song than you thought might be possible to report on, check out the most recent episode of Andrew Hickey’s monumental podcast series A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, which is partially what brought the song back to the front burner here (although I’ll note I had nearly included it in EPS 10.10, before the Hickey episode; it’s been in my “to be featured at some point” folder for a long time).