Sunday, December 25, 2022

2022 Mixes

Let's do this.

Past mixes: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021

There's a lot here this year, so I'll try to keep videos to a minimum for readability.  The extra length this year comes from both having plenty of time to listen to music on my park walks as well as dedicating two mixes to artists that I seriously binged this year. Also - these are obviously a little late and since there's SO much on here, I didn't spend as long as normal second guessing the orders, so if some of the transitions are rough - mea culpa. 

Disc 1
1. 30/90 - tick, tick... BOOM! This could go on the musicals mix, but not only did I watch this on New Years Eve last year, it's just great for an opener. 
2. Heaven is Here - Florence + the Machine. Am I going to post all the Autumn de Wilde videos? Hell yeah I am:
5. Lux Æterna - Metallica. Yay new Metallica!
7. The Perfect Girl - Mareux

9. Wolf - Yeah Yeah Yeahs (also how great was Severance?)
11. Let Us Die - King Princess. Oh hey, video. Who knew?
13. Pegasus ft. Bailey Flores - Boyfriend. Boyfriend technically put out her debut album this year? Even though she's been around for ages? And some of the songs are older ones (and found on past mixes) but there's quite a few of the new songs on these mixes, since I love her. 
14. And Saints - Sleigh Bells. An older sleigh bells song, but one that I had missed.
17. Black Summer - RHCP. YAY John Frusciante is back! (And I know they put out a second album this year I haven't even gotten to yet.)
18. Porta - Sharon Van Etten. Sadly, I didn't love Sharon's new album. Her concert was also one of several this year where I gave up my tickets for covid concerns. Still - I like this song. 
19. King - Florence + the Machine


20. Tomorrow Screams - Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum. Look - I was watching the new season of Dexter and I started listening to the band and they're pretty great.

Disc 2 - the dance/pop stuff
1. All Up In Your Mind - Beyoncé. This song ATE MY BRAIN. Not quite as badly as one coming up later. But it was one of those that I just had to put on repeat for about a week. 
3. Blinding Lights - The Weeknd. Yes this is a 2020 song. I listened to it a few times then and thought, meh. Wish he was still doing more House of Balloons/Thursday stuff. And then I needed to listen to this a bunch of times in October. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 
4. About Damn Time - Lizzo. I didn't love her new album, nor did I love this song when it first came out, but it's grown on me. 
5. Free - Florence + the Machine

6. Mastermind - Taylor Swift. Hey! I liked a couple of songs off a Taylor Swift album! Will wonders never cease. 
7. As It Was - Harry Styles

8. Running Up That Hill Save Your Tears - Kate Bush x The Weeknd x Altégo. I gather that the Kim Petras cover of Running Up That Hill was the big post-Stranger Things cover hit this year, but since I didn't find that as good as the Meg Myers cover included on my 2020 mixes, I'm throwing this on here instead
9. Your Silent Face - New Order. Ugh. You Guys. Bones and All. Love love loved it. 
10. Anything But Me - MUNA

12. Goddess - XANA. Hee. I enjoy the stylized names in a row.
15. Hatefuck - Pussy Riot & Slayyyter. I saw Pussy Riot at Outside Lands and it was great. 
18. All That Glitters - Earl. I mean - great sample. And I love faux-20s songs. 
19. My Love - Florence + the Machine

20. For Whom the Fires Burn (Aethervox remix) - Phildel. Hey - it just wouldn't be one of these mixes without a Phildel song. New album next year! (And a new single just dropped yesterday). 

Disc 3 - the soft/other stuff
1. Rain Dance - Jon Algar. For the aesthetics.
5. Billions - Caroline Polachek. I'm bummed I dislike her two latest singles, but at least I liked these two from earlier in the year. 
6. no, no - Temps. Hey! James Acaster is making music! (I almost put the He is Dead and She is Bad party gator remix on here, too)
8. Breaking Up Slowly - Lana del Rey. From last year, but listened to it a bunch this year.
10. Terra - Ardie Son. More vibes.
12. Destroy Everything You Touch - Unwoman. Hey! Unwoman liked some of my twitter ranting about the destruction of the Castro theater. (Have you signed the petition/sent a letter to save the Castro yet? GO DO THAT.)
15. Caught - AFI. I saw them the first time they performed this live. It was great. (Once Davey corrected Jade on the opening, which was amazing.)
16. I'm With You - Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross. I'm so sad Bones and All didn't make the shortlist for Best Score, as it's the one I've been listening to. I think it's one of their best. 
18. Spitting off the Edge of the World ft. Perfume Genius - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Disc 4 - the musicals
1. Naatu Naatu - RRR. I'm preemptively mad at the Academy for this not winning Best Song:

3. You Oughta Know - Jagged Little Pill OBC. I did not see Jagged Little Pill, but I like this version.
4. Crazy Rolling - Moulin Rouge OBC. I saw Moulin Rouge this year. It was not good (some elements were, but the whole thing didn't hang together). But this was the best of the new music and I'm always down for Aaron Tveit. (Here, have him listening to Lizzo covering him.) 
5. Life Upon the Wicked Stage - Anna Kendrick. An old favorite:

6. Many a New Day - Oklahoma OBC. Finally! Fucklahoma! This was faaaaabulous. Maybe the best show I saw this year? This modern version did not change a word of the original text, and it was genuinely scary, sexy, audacious, and thrilling. Love Rebecca Naomi Jones' version of this song - my favorite on the album. I'll never look at shucking corn the same way again.
7. Roam - Passengers. I saw this WONDERFUL 7 Fingers/(digits?) show at ACT and promptly got the album. I also hadn't realized till yesterday that this was created by Shana Carroll, Jon Carroll's daughter! (I knew she was in a circus troop from his columns, but didn't put two and two together for several months.)
8. Wedding Song - Hadestown OBC. The other show I had been toying with a 2019 NYC trip for (along with OK!) I really enjoyed it, and while I haven't delved deeply into all the musical versions, I'm adding a couple of the songs I liked best upon first viewing in here. 
9. People will Say We're in Love (reprise) - Oklahoma OBC (Here, have a video that mashes up the song and the reprise)
10. Is This Not Love - Twelfth Night Public Works Cast. This was at the Playhouse and was my first theater show back. If it wasn't great, there were at least several clever bits. (I'm due to see the same team's As You Like it in a couple of weeks.)
11. Any Way the Wind Blows - Hadestown OBC. This song is the set piece for one of my favorite bits of theater magic I've seen in a while. 
12. Sunday - tick, tick...BOOM! Pardon me while I bawl my eyes out:

13. Sonya Alone - Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812. Saw this at the Shotgun Players for the west coast premiere. I would have loved to see how it played in the (full) cabaret setting in New York (From the Tonys performance it seemed a bit more anarchic and punk. I've also heard there were some pretty significant changes made between its first incarnation and broadway, and the shotgun players version may have used a bit of both?). It's certainly an ambitious production. I thought this song was particularly beautiful (and I might have liked the voice of the singer I saw even better? But either way, this song is gorgeous.)
15. Oklahoma - Oklahoma OBC. We're into the Act 2 closers. This is actually the least successful recording on the album, because it doesn't really capture the spine-tingling wailing of the women at the end of the show. But it's still good.
18. End of Show - Follies (National Theatre Cast). I did see Follies again this year, and while nothing could live up to the recent National Theatre production (which: WHY isn't it on NT@Home, hmm?), any cast has one of the greatest shows ever to work with. (I did consider adding Imelda's Losing My Mind, because how many times does anyone do something better than Bernadette Peters? But I already had Sunday for a guaranteed crier on here.) One of the all-time great endings. 

So. While it's not uncommon for me to have 4 albums for a year, I declined to over-edit myself, because I already thought about and rejected trying to mix these next two artists in with the other discs. I listened to a TON of both of these, so they get their own albums:

Disc 5 - Orville Peck
I listened to SO much Orville Peck last year. I saw him play the Fox in May and it was transcendent. 
1. Daytona Sand (Bronco)

2. Turn to Hate (Pony)
4. C'mon Baby, Cry (Bronco)

5. Winds Change (Pony)
6. Drive Me, Crazy (Show Pony)
7. No Glory in the West (Show Pony)
8. Any Turn (Bronco) Patter song! 
9. All I Can Say (Bronco)
10. Blush (Bronco)
11. Trample Out the Days (Bronco)
12. Dead of Night (Pony)
13. Let Me Drown (Bronco). This song. THIS SONG. This song ate my brain so hard this year that it is now in my top 20 played songs on iTunes of all time. (Or at least since 2005.) 

Disc 6 - Shearwater
As mentioned in last year's mixes, I was going to start listening to a bunch of Shearwater this year. And while I didn't (yet) make it through the full back catalog, there's so much I listened to (or re-listened to) this year that I loved - particularly Animal Joy and Fellow Travelers - that there's clearly a full album here. (I already loved all of Jet Plane and Oxbow, although I listened to some tracks a bit more this year than in 2016):
1. Empty Orchestra (The Great Awakening). New album this year! This is my favorite track off it.
2. Quiet Americans (Jet Plane and Oxbow). This one was already on the 2016 mixes, but it's one of my all-time favorite songs, so I had to include it! (I started out with Filaments and Pale Kings on this list as well, but as they were also on 2016, I thought I should just keep the one repeat.)

3. You As You Were (Animal Joy)
4. I Luv the Valley OH!! (Fellow Travelers) This is such a great rock cover. (Fellow Travelers is covers from bands Shearwater has toured with.)
5. Breaking the Yearlings (Animal Joy)
6. Natural One (Fellow Travelers)
7. Radio Silence (Jet Plane and Oxbow)
8. Hurts like Heaven (Fellow Travelers)
9. Going Out (Loma; single) I haven't listened to the two Loma albums yet. Next year! But here's a preview.
10. Animal Life (Animal Joy)
11. Mountain Laurel (Thieves EP). This one also made the 2020 mixes. 
12. Wildlife in America (2013 demo). This is the first of two Patreon songs I stuck on here. Jonathan found some old demos and sent them out (Jet Plane demos, although he just sent Animal Joy demos, which I'm saving for the new year.) This was my favorite of the bunch. (the demo is obviously only on patreon, but here is Wildlife in America)
13. Mellow Yellow (Mangled Classics vol. 3) The other Patreon song. For Patreon, Jonathan does a mangled classic each month, then wraps them all up in an album (I joined the patreon around vol 2.) It makes his my favorite patreon to follow (now that Phildel is off). It seems like a fairly low-effort little bonus for supporters and we all get a few minutes of extra music each month from a favorite musician; excellent plan, well done all around. I picked this one because it both captures the creepy vibe of the song, while fixing the creepiest/most problematic bit of the lyrics.  
14. Star of the Age (Animal Joy)
15. Xenarthran (The Great Awakening)
16. Fucked Up Life (Fellow Travelers)
17. Backchannels (Jet Plane and Oxbow). Put down the knife, indeed.
18. Insolence (Animal Joy)
19. Everyone You Touch (The Great Awakening)
20. The Snow Leopard (Rook). Ah. The first Shearwater song I ever heard. Last on the 2009 mixes. It remains one of the most beautiful songs of all time. 

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