Thad Kopec just recently released The Ridge EP, a collection of meticulous and understated indie-folk tunes. To celebrate, he has been so kind as to make MAGNET a mix tape, which you can check out below.
Bill Withers “Grandma’s Hands”
Bill Withers might just be the most effortlessly cool person who has ever existed. I mean, the guy wrote a song about how his grandma always knew best. It may not be his most well-known song, but “Grandma’s Hands” is a damn good one. Video
Feist “Inside And Out”
The way this song is produced is, for me, perfect. The closeness and clarity of the mix makes room for the song to sound rich as it travels through simplicity and complexity alike. And those horns in the bridge kill me every time. Video
Neil Young “Down By The River”
Nothing like a good murder ballad. Besides the wonderfully bizarre lyrics of this song, the solo in the middle is one of my favorites ever. It has this lackadaisical quality, but it also has this angry energy and pent-up frustration—like an animal that’s been in a cage so long it’s almost forgot how to walk free, but it’s getting its legs. Video
My Morning Jacket “Librarian”
During my freshman year of college, I read a Joyce Carol Oates short story called “Three Girls” for a literature class. The narrator of the story is constantly buried in a New York bookstore that she loves called The Strand. She says she is “enchanted by books;” she loves everything about them. For her, there is something transcendent about being among stacks of so many thousands of words that reach across time and space to be bound in books. I realized somewhere in that story that this was exactly the kind of woman I would always fall for. Unfortunately for 19-year-old me, this particular girl was both fictional and gay. But I like to think Jim James felt the same way as he peeked through the shelves at “the sexiest librarian,” who never became real to him outside of his own head. Video
Torres “Chains”
This indulgently dark song pulls you down into the subterranean depths of Mackenzie Scott’s subconscious. If you let it take you there, there’s something really beautiful down in that ether that will entrance you and fill you with a weird terror. The final moment of the song is one of my favorite moments in music ever. Video
Pavement “Gold Soundz”
Whenever I hear this song, I think of driving through the Midwest on little weekend tours with Keeps, the band I play bass with. I can feel the vast expanse of cornfields in Indiana stretching out on either side, my stomach beginning to hurt from how long I’ve been laughing way too hard, and the shared giddiness about the show that’s going to happen in some strange new city that night. There are some songs that can capture nostalgia like no others, and it’s not merely because they are good songs, but because there is some magic about them that’s beyond understanding. For me, “Golden Soundz” is chief among these. Video
