soundtrack

shaun and i (with the operative word being Shaun) drove his sister back to her home in bellingham yesterday. that's about two hours north of seattle. this is what we listened to.

i think if i had to take the music of one artist, and one artist only, to a desert island, it would be that of ani difranco. i can still remember the first time i heard one of her songs, how rich and meaningful both her music and lyrics were. and still are.

some people say that she's the stuff of the quintessential female college-student experience and should be listened to solely in that realm of one's life. my husband is a proud card-carrying member of these people. i think the phrase "Whiny Man-Hating Dirges" gets mentioned a lot in reference to her music.

but then he knows how much she means to me, and so he'll occasionally tolerate a few songs, or even sometimes choose a record of hers for my sake.

"Knuckle Down" by ani difranco came out two years ago. the whole album doesn't play well in a car-trip situation, and so we just listened to "studying stones", "sunday morning", "lag time", "modulation" and "manhole".


Ace of Base is absolutely shaun's music. along with guns 'n' roses, metallica, and the presidents of the united states of america. (yes, i knew all this before i decided to marry him.) ace of base is pretty much the music i like most out of these options, and it's fun to revisit songs that were top twenty hits in 1994.

"The Sign" is the album that we chose.

p.s. this group is touring eastern europe at the moment. lucky lithuanians.


in terms of classical music, shaun is a brass man, rather than a strings or wind man. he likes Dvorak's new world symphony, a.k.a. Symphony No. 9, in E Minor "From the New World" (Op. 95).

when i was looking for that piece at the seattle city library, the name "Tone Poems" caught my eye, and i borrowed that one too.

since carissa was sleeping in the backseat, we didn't have this one on very loud. but it was lovely background music for the autumnal symphony of chuckanut drive.



"John Henry" by they might be giants (tmbg) is the album that brings back feelings from the beginning of our relationship---for me, anyway. i had never heard of tmbg until shaun lent me this record. i listened to it a lot while i worked, because they totally rock.

i think i can speak for shaun when i say that if he were to take only one band's music with him to a desert island, it would be tmbg's. they are about as prolific as difranco, and i really like their music too. i made a mix cd of their stuff for precisely car trips like this one. we sang along to most of the songs---like "Your Racist Friend", "No!", "I Am Not Your Broom", and "Youth Culture Killed My Dog"---as we pulled out of bellingham on the journey back to seattle.

lots of fun.


charlotte gainsbourg sings in both english and french on her latest album, "5:55". this was playing while we sat in long, painful, rain-storm traffic on the highway home.

when the cd player automatically began playing this one again after it had ended, shaun said, "Oh, we're definitely not listening to this one again---preferably never---but definitely not right now."

because i love this music and this singer so much, i'm choosing to believe that it's the association with being stuck in traffic that this album might have, rather than the music itself, as the reason for his "apparent dislike".


joan wasser was the violinist girlfriend of jeff buckley at the time that he drowned. this is how i know her name and why her new record, "Joan as Police Woman", was interesting to me. seems like you can listen to some of the tracks here.

i do think that some of her singing and the melodies are vaguely buckley-esque, but that's all right with me. i like this album. it's moody.


i have a super-eclectic collection of music. shaun has a brand new zune. i created a couple of playlists for him of stuff that i thought he might like.

when he said "I do like one french band. It's called 'Le Tone', but you've only given me one of their songs," i immediately hunted down the album and bought it off amazon.

le tone has another album, called "Playlist", but it wasn't available anywhere online.

so i bought "Le Petit Nabab", which is very plink-plonk-happy and electronicky. they use noises from children's toys and movie soundbites. shades of CocoRosie and this australian band called The Avalanches.