Razed by Wolves - An Anti-Valentine's Day Mix

You'd think that after a full year, I'd be slightly better adjusted, less volatile, more hopeful, less given to falling asleep on public lampposts, couches and floors, and less prone to sharing my inane yet embarrassingly revealing personal thoughts. Not so. As a direct consequence (and evidence) of my lack of personal growth, here's the second annual edition of my Anti-Valentine's Day Mix:

DOWNLOAD LINK

Track by track run-through [if it gets tedious, you can just listen to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours instead. The idea is roughly the same, I think.]:

1. Slow Club - It's Christmas and You're Boring Me

Let's start at the beginning. A simple and stately falling out of love song without historionics. Sometimes nothing turns out to be better than something.

2. Ace Bushy Striptease - Iluvya (Hate Version)

The two vocalists singing/talking over each other on this song really grab me. Relationships - two people attempting to come together and reconcile their disparate personalities and idiosyncrasies - rarely take the form of organized discussions and negotiations. More often it's jumbled argumentative cross-talk that belies cross-purposes. Oftentimes, you don't even care what the other says and overlook blemishes and canyons of incompatibility. And then someone always wins at the end.

3. The Field Mice - Canada

It's hard to understand the full extent of your deficiencies as a person until you've been soundly rejected. And by soundly, I mean when you've pretty much decided that this (they) is it, and they didn't (see song #1). Double this when it comes to being rejected for someone else. It literally means that another person (who you've been building up as something incredible) considered you for a while, thought about all of your qualities, and said "not for me, I'll take that instead." Crushing would be the word to describe this, I suppose. For a while it seems pretty ridiculous and almost impossible as well. So in a completely contradictory fashion, however, it also makes you feel totally superior to everyone else - to the person who rejected you (for rejecting everything you have to offer for something less), to the person he/she rejected you for (for being so obviously inferior to you), and to everyone else (for not seeing the extent of the tragedy of the situation).

4. The Exlovers - You Forget So Easily

More than any current working band (and possibly more than any band with the exception of the aforementioned Fleetwood Mac) the Exlovers ARE Anti-Valentine's Day. [To paraphrase Nathan Rabin's description of the emotional impact of the upcoming film Blue Valentine] Every single line/second in this song is designed with precision to unearth and bring forward the most painful romantic memories you've always wanted to forget. Forgetting easily, yeah right.

5. Matt and Kim - Lessons Learned

A song so upbeat, it's almost possible to miss that it's actually pretty bleak. "Thinking about tomorrow won't change how I feel today."

6. Blue Roses - I am Leaving

I always want to leave. I always think that everywhere I'm not is better and I could be happier there. [Leaving also has a particular interest for me right now. There's a measure of discomfort I feel in Ottawa that I can't seem to overcome. It follows me.] I guess you could call me an optimist.

7. Jens Lekman - I'm Leaving You Because I Don't Love You

Jens always sings about women leaving him / not loving him, so it feels like he's finally getting his due at first by telling the same thing to his significant other. But then you start thinking about how the girl/woman he's involved with actually likes him and how he's [you're] a terrible person for stringing her along for a while and then leaving her (but still talking about kissing her) and it turns out to be a not so empowering downer after all. It's the endless romantic cycle of misery. Everyone is a shit to everyone else who is not their ideal match.

8. New Order - Love Less

This song is a pretty fascinating and unsettling combination of accusatory and defensive tones and weird stalker-y undertones. Yet, it still manages to be affecting because for all of its confusion, the one overriding emotion here is clear and damn near universal: needy desperation. We've all been there, and we all keep coming back for more.

9. Jay Walk Snail - The Boy Gets Lonely

The boundaries between friendships and relationships are thin and porous and leak at the most inopportune moments and eventually break down under the pressure and flood the chambers and lead the boat to sink like a rock to the bottom of the ocean. How's that for a confused and mixed metaphor?

10. The Walkmen - The Rat

This is the Deer Hunter (film, not band) of romantic PTSD. Empty Empty Empty. I don't think that there's anything I can say about this one that will say any more than the actual song does. Let's just go with the visceral reaction then: this song makes me want to pound my head against the wall until I see stars I can walk on. It's the drums, right?

11. Coeur de Pirate - Corbeau

The best part about listening to a foreign song (or even a song that's hard to understand) is that you can kind of gauge its mood and then make up your own lyrics that kind of make sense as you go along. Seriously, try it, it's amazing. The trouble is that when you're in a particular mood, pretty much every song you hear and don't quite understand sounds like it's about breaking up or being alone. Anyways, I'm 80% sure this is a break up song (c'est fini avec toi?). If not, this is the saddest song about any other subject ever.

12. The National - Wasps Nest

For the record, I really hate it when people love a song because "it totally talks about what happened to me and it's like it's written about me!" But some songs can't help but bring back a very particular person when you listen to them. More than any other National song, this is all about being stuck. It perfectly reproduces the conflicting desire to run away and towards something and someone. Bright lights for moths.

13. Gigi - No, My Heart Will Go On

Time doesn't heal, as much as it kills.

14. No Age - My Life's Alright Without You

I love love love how this song seems to be taking breaths between invectives. And then it ends in this massive cathartic ranting explosion. Seems like an apt conclusion.