An end-of-semester playlist
By Matthew Landry
Issue date: 11/29/07 Section: Film & Music
December brings with it a share of good and bad. Its trademark is that lingering melancholy that seems to follow the parades, egg nog and songs your family used to sing. After 3 months of papers, exams, co-ops, hook-ups and break-ups, it's enough to push a college kid over the edge, packing up their belongings and striking out in search of meaning and adventure. With this theme in mind, I strove to create the best travel mix CD I could cull from my bulging iTunes folder. And without further ado...
1. Band of Horses - "Lamb on the Lam"
This slight, reverby guitar interlude creeks with all the beauty inherent in sadness and confusion. A profound epilogue to a great adventure.
2. Bob Dylan - "Like a Rolling Stone"
3. Arcade Fire - "Keep the Car Running"
4. Bruce Springsteen - "Born to Run"
These three tracks capture the excitement and the romanticism of self discovery, those breathless first hours leaving everything behind, lost in the glare coming through a Greyhound window, or the hum of a jet engine at 40,000 ft.
5. The Beatles - "The Two of Us"
6. Elliott Smith - "Let's Get Lost"
7. Broken Social Scene - "Pacific Theme"
The initial happiness of traveling for travel's sake. With no destination in particular, and a day's memory away from who you were back then, the bus could keep rolling and you'd be okay with that.
8. Boards of Canada - "84' Pontiac Dream"
9. The Field - "Over The Ice"
10. The Chemical Brothers- "Dream On"
11. Daft Punk - "Veridis Quo"
From sunset to sunrise, you've drifted into a trance like state, pulled between the past and the future, locked in a constant struggle for control of your state of mind. You have the first signs of regret, of understanding, of resolve to make yourself a better person. With "Dream On" soundtracking a 6 a.m. sunrise and "Veridis Quo", the melody of early morning idealism, you've broken free and life is a clean slate.
12. Camera Obscura- "Let's Get Out of This Country"
On your feet now, you walk about towns you never thought you'd see, marvelling at lives you never knew were being lived. The sun shines at an angle with a ferocity you never noticed back home in your room. You meet new friends and a new love, and log an entire new life path into your psyche.
13. Van Morrison - "Into the Mystic"
14. Iron and Wine - "Sunset Soon Forgotten"
15. M83 - "Slight Night Shiver"
16. Death Cab for Cutie - "Passenger Seat"
You experience these new souls, their hopes and fears, and you share yourself over a beer, a fire and the chill of winter. With little money and no distractions, you connect with others and discuss the great questions of life, its meaning and what happens after. You're filled with the sadness and the freedom of realizing your own insignificance, that each of these people is as lost and as scared as you and that these moments are only transitory, before each person must splinter off further down the road.
17. Brian Eno/Daniel Lanois/ Roger Eno - "An Ending (ascent)"
The glow of the morning sun, not yet risen, though stretching itself further over the horizon, brings quiet clarity. You pack up.
8. Death Cab for Cutie-"A Movie Script Ending"
With the sun on your face and the wind to your back, you begin this trip all over again.
1. Band of Horses - "Lamb on the Lam"
This slight, reverby guitar interlude creeks with all the beauty inherent in sadness and confusion. A profound epilogue to a great adventure.
2. Bob Dylan - "Like a Rolling Stone"
3. Arcade Fire - "Keep the Car Running"
4. Bruce Springsteen - "Born to Run"
These three tracks capture the excitement and the romanticism of self discovery, those breathless first hours leaving everything behind, lost in the glare coming through a Greyhound window, or the hum of a jet engine at 40,000 ft.
5. The Beatles - "The Two of Us"
6. Elliott Smith - "Let's Get Lost"
7. Broken Social Scene - "Pacific Theme"
The initial happiness of traveling for travel's sake. With no destination in particular, and a day's memory away from who you were back then, the bus could keep rolling and you'd be okay with that.
8. Boards of Canada - "84' Pontiac Dream"
9. The Field - "Over The Ice"
10. The Chemical Brothers- "Dream On"
11. Daft Punk - "Veridis Quo"
From sunset to sunrise, you've drifted into a trance like state, pulled between the past and the future, locked in a constant struggle for control of your state of mind. You have the first signs of regret, of understanding, of resolve to make yourself a better person. With "Dream On" soundtracking a 6 a.m. sunrise and "Veridis Quo", the melody of early morning idealism, you've broken free and life is a clean slate.
12. Camera Obscura- "Let's Get Out of This Country"
On your feet now, you walk about towns you never thought you'd see, marvelling at lives you never knew were being lived. The sun shines at an angle with a ferocity you never noticed back home in your room. You meet new friends and a new love, and log an entire new life path into your psyche.
13. Van Morrison - "Into the Mystic"
14. Iron and Wine - "Sunset Soon Forgotten"
15. M83 - "Slight Night Shiver"
16. Death Cab for Cutie - "Passenger Seat"
You experience these new souls, their hopes and fears, and you share yourself over a beer, a fire and the chill of winter. With little money and no distractions, you connect with others and discuss the great questions of life, its meaning and what happens after. You're filled with the sadness and the freedom of realizing your own insignificance, that each of these people is as lost and as scared as you and that these moments are only transitory, before each person must splinter off further down the road.
17. Brian Eno/Daniel Lanois/ Roger Eno - "An Ending (ascent)"
The glow of the morning sun, not yet risen, though stretching itself further over the horizon, brings quiet clarity. You pack up.
8. Death Cab for Cutie-"A Movie Script Ending"
With the sun on your face and the wind to your back, you begin this trip all over again.
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