Pulp Shakespeare:

ACT I SCENE 2. A road, morning. Enter JULES and VINCENT, murderers.

V: And know’st thou what the French name cottage pie?
J: Say they not cottage pie, in their own tongue?
V: But nay, their tongues, for speech and taste alike
Are strange to ours, with their own history:
Gaul knoweth not a cottage from a house.
J: What say they then, pray?
V: Hachis Parmentier.
J: Hachis Parmentier! What name they cream?
V: Cream is but cream, only they say la crème.
J: What do they name black pudding?
V: I know not;
I visited no inn it could be bought.

More here and here.

My fellow abbot whom I’m soon to break.
My drainage hath consumed your whole milkshake.

“We Didn’t” by Stuart Dybek from I Sailed with Magellan:

How adept we were at fumbling, how perfectly mistimed our timing, how utterly we confused energy with ecstasy.

They did it in honor of man and woman, in honor of beast, in honor of God. They did it because they’d been released, because they were home free, alive, and private, because they couldn’t wait any longer, couldn’t wait for the appointed hour, for the right time or temperature, couldn’t wait for the future, for Messiahs, for peace on earth and justice for all. They did it because of the Bomb, because of pollution, because of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, because extinction might just be a blink away. They did it because it was Friday night. It was Friday night and somewhere delirious music was playing — flutter-tongued flutes, muted trumpets meowing like cats in heat, feverish plucking and twanging, tom-toms, congas, and gongs all pounding the same pulsebeat.

Headlights bounded towards us, spotlights crisscrossing, blue dome lights revolving as squad cars converged. I could see other lovers, caught in the beams, fleeing bare-assed through the litter of garbage that daytime hordes had left behind and that night had deceptively concealed. You were crying, clutching the Navajo blanket to your breasts with one hand and clawing for your bikini with the other, and I was trying to calm your terror with reassuring phrases such as “Holy shit! I don’t fucking believe this!”

We were sitting, no longer talking or touching, and I remember thinking that I didn’t want to argue with you anymore. I didn’t want to sit like this in hurt silence; I wanted to talk excitedly all night as we once had. I wanted to find some way that wasn’t corny sounding to tell you how much fun I’d had in your company, how much knowing you had meant to me, and how I had suddenly realized that I’d been so intent on becoming lovers that I’d overlooked how close we’d been as friends. I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to like me again.

61 degrees outside, bright and sunny, with big, fluffy clouds spotting that old upside-down sea. Spring is here, for real this time, and I would be remiss in my duties to not act accordingly: eleven songs for laying around in fields of cool grass and soft breezes. So without further ado, let’s take a trip.

These United States - First Sight - I was very hesitant to post this song, let alone as the lead track. I am a sucker (oh my heart melts instantly!) for a song with a slow crescendo before a wild crash. But “First Sight” just builds and builds and builds, until my only recourse is to play the song over and over until it magically rewrites itself. But what’s to rewrite? It’s too beautiful already.

Memorable quotes: You can get home, but you can’t get in. Locks are like longing (an ever-changing thing), and keys are just clouds made of metal and spark. We knew exactly who we were, and yet couldn’t quite say who we still are.

Trip Planner: Hangovers off, shoes on, and out the door.

Alamo Race Track - Stanley vs. Hanna - It may be the first verse (quoted below), or the ghostly chorus singing “don’t forget that number I wrote on the back of your hand”, or a million other things…but I listen to this song and I am suddenly a decade younger, sitting in the middle of a three-ring circus, tripping on acid. It is an odd experience.

Memorable quotes: Don’t trust a man with the creepy little eyes. He is at once a friend, but you’re scared inside. Then, he beats you up ’cause you bust his lip, and you ask yourself, “What have I done?” Then, he locks you up in the trunk of his car.

Trip Planner: It is around that time for feet to begin hurting, but with the destination finally in sight, who can help but get a little skip in their step?

The Owls - Isaac Bashevis Singer - Such a sweet little song about nothing. A three-and-a-half-minute biography about, not the Nobel Prize-winning author, but Isaac Bashevis Singer the man. The sort of man you want as your best friend: well off, far from snobby, comfortably hospitable, and always has a stocked bar.

Memorable quotes: Isaac Bashevis Singer, he didn’t always live in New York, but he knows about the ladies.

Trip Planner: Kick off those shoes, and feel the grass beneath your feet.

She & Him - Why Do You Let Me Stay Here - Actress Zooey Deschanel is the she of She & Him, and M. Ward is the he. And…I don’t know, when was the last time M. Ward produced something bad? In other news, Deschanel’s voice rings with such soft innocence, but where does it come from? A prize to whoever can tell me her secret; my guess is sun showers and rainbows.

Memorable quotes: Why don’t you sit right down and stay a while? We like the same things, and I like your style. It’s not a secret, why do you keep it? I’m just sitting on the shelf.

Trip Planner: Can’t you take a hint? Just sit right down and soak in the day.

Patrick Wolf - The Magic Position - John Cusack in High Fidelity spoke on the problem of starting a mix with the best song. Give a person what they want straightaway, and who knows if they’ll ever make it past track one? A song like this has to be buried in the middle, tucked away until the sun and birds have infused you with such hope and love that you can’t even imagine things getting any better.

Memorable quotes: It’s you who puts me in the magic position, darling. Now, you put me in the magic position to live, to learn, to love in the major key.

Trip Planner: Oh fuck! The ice cream man is here!

But don’t worry, there’s always more.

Side Two: Set the dial to random and volume up to awesome:

Hospital Bombers - The Devil’s Music
Two Hours Traffic - Nighthawks
The LK - Private Life of a Cat
Evan Voytas - We’d Be Good Together
Feist - Feel It All (Britt from Spoon Remix)
Wildbirds & Peacedrums - I Can’t Tell In His Eyes

Trip Planner: Stomachs full, the only thing left to do is wait until the sun sets and the moon rises, dancing and lazying all the meanwhile.

There are two days left of snow and cold, two days before the skies clear and warmth pours down again on this side of the world. A running thread through the last few naked mixes was a strong disdain for everything winter, and the songs tried to keep the cold at bay until at least a moment or two of dancing and smiles could be had. But with the dreaded season finally coming to a close, I am dedicating this mix to sitting alone in bed with the covers drawn tight while the wind beats at the window.

When possible, lyrics will replace any prosaic exposition.

BARR - Untitled - The melancholy of this song, more than any guilt from consistently cheapening an entire season, is the soul of this mix. Listening to Brendan Fowler slowly speak to us about a friend too into something that is destroying their life, sounding as if he is reading a letter directly to that friend, is heartbreaking. This is an intervention backed by fragile music. And when Fowler finally sings (and it’s just two lines, just “you have to make it out” and “when you make it out“), you want to hug and assure him things will be okay as soon as the snow clears.

I don’t know if I can save everyone, but I’m taking you with me, ’cause I need you and you need you, and we… you and I need you, and this world needs you. Even this world… not this small dark world, but the big earth, even with less room has space for you, and that’s a really important space.

Jason Anderson - On Vacation - Jason Anderson speaks here through old telephone lines and faraway geographies, filled with a nostalgia one could only know with eyes closed and mind imagining endless white plains. This is the song you sing softly to an answering machine after you’ve killed an entire bottle of liquor and found that box of old love letters under your bed, hidden away in that corner you were so sure at the time you would never find again. (thx eca records)

And you just sort of sat there, and you had a cigarette… then it burned down, right to… right down to your fingers, and you let it drop on the cold asphalt. And I think of that, and I think that’s, like, really the night that we sort of fell for each other, you know? As people, as friends, and… I know that so much has changed since then, but I’ll always remember that night on the street.

The Avett Brothers - If It’s The Beaches

If it’s the beaches…if it’s the beaches’ sands you want, then you will have them. If it’s the mountains’ bending rivers, then you will have them. If it’s the wish to run away, then I will grant it. Take whatever you think of while I go gas up the truck. Pack the old love letters up; we will read them when we forget why we left here.

Okkervil River - Listening to Otis Redding During Christmas - New Hampshire must have soil soaked with pensiveness and heaviness. This song is dedicated to all those who have drove through their hometowns feeling like strangers, reminiscing over the past when a surreal and grand future seemed right around the corner. Alternatively, to that first real love that never leaves your head. (thx okkervil river)

I know that it’s home because that’s where the stereo sings “I’ve got dreams to remember.” But not even home can be with you forever. It’s Christmastime and the plane flies me over white hills to a town in a dream, where the sky is frozen and still, and a room (that’s not mine but it’s just like I left it before, with the wax from the candles all dusty and locks on the door) where I held you so tenderly, and where in summer I opened your letter to me.

Nathan Larson - Aviva Pastoral - Brooding and haunting, this track has been slowly permeating my head for the past few weeks. Most well known for soundtracking the demise of a chocolate bunny, I warn you it is the sort of track that ingrains itself deep, and you may not realize it until you turn off the lights to sleep, only to hear it emanating from phantasmal speakers.

Mechanical Bride - Umbrella - Mechanical Bride completely rips the lyrics from their pop shell and runs them through a dark blender. The airy bells, sharp piano, and reverberating vocals make this cover much different than the original R&B track, and maybe even more ghostly than “Aviva Pastoral” above.

Jaymay - Gray or Blue - Okay okay okay, it is due time for something with a little pace to it. “Gray or Blue” is nothing profound, but it is everything unrequited romance is: quiet and unpredictable and hopeful and sad. On their own, the lyrics may seem trite even, but Jaymay sings with such sincerity and emotion that you can’t help but develop a crush of your own.

And I’m winning you with words because I have no other way // I want to look into your face without your eyes turnin away // Last night I watched you sing because a person has to try // And I walked home in the rain because a person cannot lie

Kat Flint - Go Faster Stripes - Don’t say I never bring you nice things.

The next naked mix will be more upbeat, I promise. All puppy dogs and hand grenades hand jobs happiness and everything else that goes into all that Spring pandemonium. We’ll enter the new day with bang.