Mixtape: Common Wealth
Intimate indie music about the ordinary in love, luck, and city life.
▶︎ Listen to Common Wealth
Liner Notes
Common Wealth is warm and worn, humble and human. It’s old-fashioned. Romantic realism. Out of time and out of reach.
It’s between dreams. Between seasons. Not still winter, but not yet spring. You’re awake, but your arm’s still asleep.
It’s grounded, but airy. Atmospheric, but concrete. Tenderness on the block.
It’s about the mundane logistics of love. The laundry, the coffee, the stairs. Your shoelaces. It’s about running on empty and running away together. Going the distance and having nowhere else to go.
It’s about luck and life. Fortune and fortunes. The strange forces that shape us. The powers that be and the powers that belong to us.
It’s about the castles and the keep. The things we keep close. And the things that keep us going. The things that are kept from us. And the things that can’t be taken.
It’s about taking care and taking chances.
It’s not not about New York.
▶︎ Listen to Common Wealth
Tracklist:
Coffee In The Morning — Wet
AUATC — Bon Iver
Love Takes Miles — Cameron Winter
Wings — Foxwarren
Plastic Soul — Mondo Cozmo
Manhattan — Cat Power
We’ve Been Had — The Walkmen
Strange Powers — The Magnetic Fields
I’ll Come Running — Brian Eno
Little Eyes — Yo La Tengo
Take Care — Beach House
Northern Sky — Nick Drake
The Lottery Song — Harry Nilsson
Me & Magdalena — The Monkees
Born Under A Bad Sign — Richard Hawley
Become Someone Else’s — Jens Lekman
▶︎ Listen to Common Wealth
For more cozy music, check out…
☊ Departures — Lost in transportation.
☊ Waxwings — Songs about people just passing through by people who were just passing through.
☊ In My Room — Dan Svizeny’s highlights of lo-fi.
☊ Den — A wintry mix from Lucas Ballasy.
You should also listen to…
☊ The Bend — Jangling fall-weather indie rock dipped in dreamy emotionally raw honey.
☊ Tonics — Bright and bitter post-punk pop and new wave to break your cabin fever.
More from me:
I’ve been writing a series of diary-style blog posts documenting the process of making this mixtape. Read Volume 1.
Born to Run at 50 and the album Springsteen nearly released instead
Some comedy for McSweeney’s called I’m Your Three-Year-Old Interior Designer and This Is Your New Home Makeover.
And remember: We are the mixtape makers. And we are the streamers of streams.