In The Night Garden

Not been sleeping too well lately - toothache. I got to thinking about what I might include on a soothing soporific night time play list. Nothing that's just ambient floating synths, but lullaby type tunes which would help subdue screaming dental nerves. Turns out it's also a mighty good selection to ease the fevered brain before starting a working day.

Let me walk you through my dreamy sleepy night garden...

1. Let It Flow - Spiritualized

Narco dreams ahoy! Nice repetition, and away we float.

2. Ghosts Of Saturday Night - Tom Waits

This is from the boozy piano balladeering days, before he reinvented himself as a skronky amalgam of Howlin Wolf and Capt Beefheart. Beautiful lyrics, though I'm still trying to work out what 'Adam and Eve on a log' are...you can sink 'em down straight...

3. Lull III A Minor Place - Rachel Unthank and the Winterset

A brief interlude during the Bairns album, appropriated from Will Oldham

4. Planet Caravan - Black Sabbath

This one is wedged somewhere in the middle of the Paranoid album, which also included Iron Man and War Pigs. This track is very far removed from the riffarama for which Sabbath are justly renowned. Almost lounge jazz in fact, with a woozy treated Ozzy vocal. Like, mellow...

5. Night Bus - Burial

A dark and rainy ride on the last bus home.

6. It's A Fine Day - Jane

I dug this up on a Cherry Red records compilation, but I do have the original 7" single downstairs. Yes it's twee, but I've always been fond of it, lyrics about not sitting in fields...

7. Untitled I - Calexico

From the soundtrack to Dead Man's Shoes

A bit sinister, this one.

8. Afterlight - Clayhill

Cheating now, this one is also taken from the aforementioned soundtrack. I really love Gavin Clarke's voice, from the Sunhouse record up to Keys To The Kingdom from last year's UNKLE album.

9. Trouble Will Soon Be Over - Blind Willie Johnson

'Christ is my burden bearer, he's my only friend'...not sure why I thought this would be good bed time listening, but it's one of Blind Willie's less bone chilling numbers, and the sentiment that 'trouble soon be over, sorrow will have an end' is a comforting one as we head towards:

10. Harp For My Sweetheart - Archie Bronson Outfit

Less a lullaby, more a bloody billet doux. 'Nine cold crimes in the night'...

11. Horizons - Genesis

Immediately precedes Supper's Ready on the Foxtrot album, a track which I would have liked to have included on this playlist were it not 23 minutes long.

12. Go Your Way - Anne Briggs

Stark English folk, another break up song.

13. John Wayne Gacey - Sufjan Stevens

Hmm..this one won't give anyone sweet dreams.

14. I Keep Havin' These Dreams - Micah P Hinson

From his new record, adding some fiddle and strings to the mournful baritone and precise finger picking. Like Gavin Clarke, a splendid voice which deserves to be more widely heard. Given the funereal nature of much of his material, it probably won't be.

15. This Side Of The Blue - Joanna Newsom

Still gorgeous, despite being stuck over a mobile phone ad.

16. Acid Food - Mogwai

A gentle meditation with a country twang, and even lyrics!

17. I - Aphex Twin

OK, I lied about the ambient swooshing

18. George - John Metcalfe

From the Late Junction compilation, every track of which was an undiscovered treat when I first heard it.

19. Couldn't Love You More - John Martyn

20. Day Is Done - Nick Drake

Two 70's classics to send us off into the arms of Morpheus

Steal a car to drive you home

Teenage Fanclub's LP Grand Prix was overshadowed on its release by What's The Story (Morning Glory) by their more boisterous label mates Oasis. Both bands were happily and avowedly in thrall to influences from the 60's and 70's, but it's the Fanclub who I return to again and again.

Fuzzy guitars, perfect choruses featuring gorgeous harmonies - splendid tunes, and not a dud on what for my money is the best album ever released on Creation. Their breakthrough LP was Bandwagonesque, which music journos liked to compare to Big Star, and which undoubtedly has the stamp of Alex Chilton running through it, but the first influence that came to me when I got my 7" of What You Do To Me home was Neil Young. The rambling, scuzzy, melodic guitar lines sounded right off Ragged Glory (another fabulous guitar album), and one of the best tracks on Grand Prix is named Neil Jung.

Grand Prix sounded instantly classic when it appeared at the height of Britpop, fighting for attention with releases like the aforementioned Oasis album, and others from Supergrass, Elastica, and PJ Harvey. Play it alongside chumps like the Kooks, Razorlight, and all the other indie boy chancers cluttering up the charts these days and it sounds impossibly exciting.