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
2 comments:
Some great picks there. It's a Fine Day I still think of as a quintessentially Tom single.
I'm 99% sure that the very dark video was shot down the road from us at Hatfield Aerodrome; she was part of a small early 80's Hatfield scene as part of the Marine Girls with Tracey Thorn. And funny what you say about Planet Caravan - it's on the Late Night Tales Air compilation, very much a jazz lounge piece.
I'm intrigued to hear that there is such a thing as 'a quintessentially Tom single'.
Name me some more!
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