Mixtape #26: Goodbye Space Ladies

This is it, folks. My final contribution to Everybody Taste. I started this site in February of 2009 and over the years I've written roughly 1,200 posts. Everybody Taste started as an outlet to share music and work on my writing while I worked at a general interest magazine. It was never about quantity of material but, hopefully, quality. This little one-person site has led to a handful of amazing opportunities: interviews with the best bands in the world, articles published in magazines, countless new friends, and even a little record company, Analog Edition. But in the words of the band Christmas Island—whose song is featured on this 26th installment of ET's mixtape series—"I'm already 29 and running out of time." Technically, I'm 28, but I'm ready to make a mark or two on this bat-shit-crazy world before it completely passes me by.

This summer I tied the knot with my best friend, and now I'm set to open a market and coffee shop in the Fall called Little Red Fox. It's going to take every moment of my waking life to make this endeavor work, so I'm going cold turkey on the endless search for new music for a stretch. But if you're ever in DC, please stop on by for coffee, a beer, fresh homemade grub, and of course, all your favorite music. And Analog Edition isn't going anywhere just yet, so if you can, please keep supporting the label and the fantastic bands on it. In my absence, please also proceed to get your musical kicks via these consistently inspiring, tasteful, and wonderfully passionate folks: Aquarium Drunkard, Rollo Grady, We Listen For You, Castle Face Records, Burger Records, Father / Daughter, Mississippi Records, Italians Do It Better, and Woodsist. Now, here it is, ET's final mixtape: Goodbye Space Ladies.

Side A

Vic Godard & The Subway Sect - "Stop That Girl"

Brenton Wood - "Baby You Got It"

Hunx & Hix Punx - "Dream On (Little Dreamer)"

The Jags - "Back of My Hand"

Richard Swift - "The Bully"

The Rock*A*Teens - "I'm Your Puppet"

Sonny & The Sunsets - "Dark Corners"

Alex Chilton - "Hey! Little Child"

The Who - "The Kids Are Alright"

Side B

Alex Bleeker & The Freaks - "Who Are You Seeing?"

Bodies of Water - "Like A Stranger"

Christmas Island - "Twenty Nine"

Beaut - "Goodbye Judy"

Wyatt Blair - "Girls!"

Tomorrows Tulips - "Casual Hopelessness"

Damien Jurado - "Mountains Still Asleep"

The Blue Rondos - "Little Baby"

Chris Bell - "You and Your Sister"

Download:

Goodbye Space Ladies

or

Stream on 8 Tracks

Mixtape #25: Don't Let This Summer Be A Bummer

Side A

Hello

Chairlift - "I Belong In Your Arms [Japanese Version]"

Dirk Diggler & Reed Rothchild - "Feel The Heat"

Generationals - "Durga II"

Don Covay - "You're Good For Me"

Woods - "Impossible Sky"

Dusty Springfield - "When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes"

Richard Swift - "Drakula (Hey Man!)"

Warm Soda - "Jeanie Loves Pop"

Martha Wainwright - "Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole"

Side B

Radiation City - "Foreign Bodies"

Benjy Ferree - "Fear"

Arthur Lee - "Everybody's Gotta Live"

Tangiers - "I Wanna Go Out"

Miyazaki - "Sequence"

Those Darlins - "Let You Down"
Heron - "Goodbye"

Karen Dalton - "Something On Your Mind"

Download:

Don't Let This Summer Be A Bummer.zip

or

Stream on 8 Tracks

Richard Swift :: Ambassador of Awesome

With all of the hullabaloo surrounding Foxygen—who, yes, released what's sure to be one of the very best records of 2013, if not the next five years or so—I've been digging into the back catalogue of Richard Swift—the man responsible for discovering the act and producing their debut full-length, We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic. Foxygen principles Sam France and Jonathan Rado are not only indebted to Swift's ear for talent and the analog recording techniques he's mastered at his fabled National Freedom studio in Cottage Grove, Oregon, but also Swift's own outsider-pop music—a key inspiration for and ingredient in Foxygen's dozen or so home-recorded oddball pop albums from high school. Swift has time and again captured and repurposed the vintage sound and appeal of the 1960s soul single—as on "Lady Luck" and "The Bully"—with razor sharp melodies, warbly textural production, and a charismatic personality that at turns confidently struts in falsetto, and in refreshing un-seriousness, delivers ribbings with shrewd comical force. Like with Foxygen, Swift seems to always be talked about in reference to the many acts he's produced—Damien Jurado, The Mynabirds, Laetitia Sadier, and Pickwick, who recently covered Swift's own "Lady Luck" with Sharon Van Etten—or the band he occasionally plays in, The Shins. But if you've got a turntable and a few hours to kill, there's few more interesting and enjoyable oeuvre's to dive into than Swift's own: a deeply personal, complex, and idiosyncratic home-brewed discography filled with heavy wafts of foggy psychedelia, molten hot tambourine-skipping R&B, and grimy garage rock. First, kick things off with a favorite from Swift's most recent album, Walt Wolfman: the hilariously engaging sing-along "Drakula (Hey Man)." Then below, snag a few downloads and proceed to go buy up all of the vinyl released by this under-appreciated holy force of awesome.

Grab Richard Swift vinyl from Secretly Canadian's SC Distribution. Photos by Sarah Jurado.

Richard Swift - "A Song For Milton Feher"
Richard Swift - "Whitman"
Richard Swift & Damien Jurado - "Crazy Like A Fox"

Mixtape #24: Tintin In Strong Acid

Side A

Jill Read - "Maybe"

Richard Swift - "Lady Luck"

The Troggs - "With A Girl Like You"

Foxygen - "San Francisco"

John Cale - "Cleo"

Beach Fossils - "Careless"

Ruby Andrews - "You Made A Believer Out Of Me"

The Liverpool Echo - "Sally Works Nights"

Bleached - "Dazed"

Side B

Terry Huff & Special Delivery - "Just Not Enough Love"

Black Marble - "A Great Design"

The Fentones - "Until The Dawn"

Kurt Vile - "Amplifier"

Garland Jeffreys - "Wild In The Streets"

Phosphorescent - "Song For Zula"

The Stone Roses - "Sally Cinnamon"

Holy Shit - "Written All Over Your Face"

Broadcast - "The Gallops"

Download:

Tintin In Strong Acid.zip

or

Stream on 8 Tracks