I haven't mentioned my own mix cds here before, and usually don't bother flagging them in my hand-writtten journal either. But I put one together last night and polished it up today, and it came out so well that it seemed to merit an exception:
* * *
Side A
1. "Sight" - Takeshi Kobayashi
2. "I Lost You (But I Found Country Music)" - Gordon McIntyre & Laura Cantrell
3. "Wayfaring Stranger" - Emmylou Harris
4. "Comes A Time" - Neil Young
5. "Seven Year Ache" - Rosanne Cash
6. "I Kicked A Boy" - The Sundays
7. "In Love With A View" - Mojave 3
Side B
8. "Why Not Smile" - R.E.M.
9. "Theme For A Trucker" - Whiskeytown
10. "The Color And The Light" - Jennifer O'Connor
11. "So Long, So Wrong" - Alison Krauss + Union Station
12. "Tabu" - Kronos Quartet [Margarita Lecuona; arr. Osvaldo Golijov]
13. "I'm Not Afraid To Die" - Gillian Welch
14. "Song Of The Liberty Bell" - Mark O'Connor
* * *
Not sure why I like it so much - it just seems to fit together just right (I'm going through a period where I value consistency of mood more than show-offy eclecticism in mix cds). I conceived of it as the soundtrack to an as yet unmade film; sides 'A' and 'B' are more for effect than anything else, figuratively breaking the mix up and also highlighting the way in which the two halves mirror each other in certain respects.
Without wanting to indulge too much in exegesis, I think of "I Lost You (But I Found Country Music)" as establishing a motif for both soundtrack and film, and all else sort of follows from there; the songs were chosen mostly because they seemed to make sense rather than because they're particular favourites of mine at this very moment. As I said before, this film hasn't been made (and nor have I written it), but I think that I can see its outlines anyway.
