Another Form of Relief

Thanks to me being a little out of it over the past week (constant painkillers = fun!), I’ve been pretty lazy in my blogging. This means that I haven’t posted about some awesome new band or whatever in over a week now, which is pretty awful. I assure you that this will be rectified in the near future, but for tonight I’d like to present you with Another Form of Relief’s fourth mixtape, entitled ‘Let’s Get Literary!’.

The theme of this one is pretty simple. It’s a collection of songs that have some literary theme, either through their words, their subject matter or in a couple of cases, their titles. It’s not the tightest collection ever put together, but it’s kind of fun, particularly for dorky music listeners like myself who get a kick out of references to authors and books and the such. Best of all, there’s not a Thom Yorke song in sight.

MP3 Belle & Sebastian - Wrapped Up In Books (expired)
Not really a literary song in it’s own right, but how could you have a mixtape of this nature and not include some Belle & Sebastian, particularly when they have an awesome little song called ‘Wrapped Up In Books’? Belle & Sebastian songs always come across as being closer to prose in their lyrics than most pop songs anyway, so I’m happy to let them slide in here, and it does set a wonderful tone for the songs that follow.

MP3 The Pop Project - House Of Books (expired)
The Pop Project are a band from Michigan that I discovered thanks to Bethanne at Clever Titles Are So Last Summer (two shout outs in two posts.. terrible) writing about them. They have a nice, cheerful sound that works perfectly, assuming you don’t mind a little sunshine in your music from time to time. The song is all about living inside a fictional world made out of your books or something. Not that it really matters when it’s this much fun.

MP3 Ryan Adams - Sylvia Plath (expired)
Well you can always rely on Ryan Adams to bring the mood down, can’t you? ‘Sylvia Plath’ is a great song, but by god it’s depressing. The melancholy vocals, the restrained piano, and the general miserable subject matter of wanting someone who is depressed to the point of suicide. That said, Ryan Adams is far better when he’s in this kind of a state than he is when trying to rock, so I’m not going to complain too much.

MP3 Modest Mouse - Bukowski (expired)
One of my favourite Modest Mouse songs, although it isn’t particularly about Bukowski other than the narrator singing about how his life is turning into something out of a Bukowski novel. The song itself is pretty much entirely a slight against the fundamentalist view of what God is supposed to be (”If God takes life, he’s an Indian giver / .. / God, who’d wanna be such an asshole?”). I’m a fan of any song that tries to challenge beliefs or offer up something controversial, and being a proud rider on the Heathen Bus makes me appreciate this all the more. Take away the content though and it’s still a mighty catchy song.

MP3 MC Lars - Ahab (expired)
MP3 MC Lars - Mr. Raven (expired)
A couple of literary adaptations offered up by MC Lars. Being an English major, he seems to enjoy working a lot of literary content into his work. There’s a third song like this called ‘Rapbeth’ but it’s pretty awful. ‘Ahab’ is an awful lot of fun, telling the story of ‘Moby Dick’ from Ahab’s point of view, somehow managing to work in a Supergrass sample for the chorus. ‘Mr. Raven’ does much the same thing for Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’. It also has to be the most stacked pop culture namecheck song ever, managing to work in Paris Hilton, Bob Dylan, Michael Moore, the Fugees, Fred Durst and Nietzsche all into the same song, as well as a fun Vanilla Ice parody. All this and it still manages to retain the story of ‘The Raven’ relatively well.

MP3 Holiday With Maggie - A Girl Like You (expired)
So we enter a little section on relationship songs that somehow connect to literature. Holiday With Maggie are a band that I keep meaning to write about, but never seem to get around to thanks to not really liking their newer material. This song though is from a time when they still sounded like 60s pop crossed with Weezer, and thus is rather excellent. The literary link is tenuous, pretty much just the guy first saw the girl in the library reading. It’s enough for me though, even if half of these are just very poor excuses to get a bunch of good songs in one post.

MP3 Rhett Miller - Our Love (expired)
I know a lot of people find Rhett Miller to be a little too middle of the road for their liking, and I’m one of them on the most part. I like a handful of his songs though, and this is one of them. The choruses are pretty cheesy, but the verses make up for them, with nice little stories about the unrequited love of both Richard Wagner (I originally wrote Robert..) and Franz Kafka. The upbeat style of the song masks the misery in the words (”Kafka in his letters to his lover Milena was alive / But he was waiting for a love that never would arrive”) very well. It’s just a shame that the depth in the choruses couldn’t get beyond the repetition of “our love”.

MP3 Pants Yell! - My Boyfriend Writes Plays (expired)
The point where the relationship with a writer falls apart. The narrator is getting bored of his relationship with his playwright boyfriend (”It’s some sense of purpose for you / Fuck your stories, I’m leaving, it’s true / All your prose and one act songs / Were never meant for me”) and keeps promising to leave. Whether this is an idle threat or not, we’ll never know, that ambiguity adding to the song. I also have a great love for any band that can use the word “fuck” with such seriousness while still sounding so twee. It’s not an easy move to pull off.

MP3 Camera Obscura - Books Written For Girls (expired)
A song from back when Camera Obscura didn’t solely make upbeat 60s pop numbers. Actually, that might be a bit harsh, I haven’t really listened to ‘Let’s Get Out Of This Country’ enough yet. ‘Books Written For Girls’ is a melancholy piece about the end of a relationship between seemingly two very quirky people (”Give me marks out of ten for the clothes that I wear / .. / He reads books written for girls / Prides himself on being a man of the world”). There is always a certain sadness in Traceyanne’s voice whatever the song is, but something like this just brings it out even further.

MP3 Belle & Sebastian - Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie (expired)
And so we come full circle and end with one of the finest Belle & Sebastian songs. A fun song about a slightly nerdy girl who doesn’t really fit in with everyone and so takes refuge in the worlds of Salinger and Kerouac as a means of a escape. Which may be slightly weird worlds to want to take refuge in, but I guess they would be pretty interesting. Oh how I wish B&S still made songs like this one.

I hope you enjoy at least some of the songs here. I had a lot of fun putting it together anyway. Now I just need to come up with an idea for our next mixtape type thing. They seem to be appearing every two or three weeks at the moment, which is quite a good rate I think. We’ll be getting back to more regular posting following this one seeing as I’m feeling a fair bit better than I have been over the past week, so be sure to keep checking back to actually see some new content!

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