Pink Floyd - Time
a song that was always stuck between its aspirations toward existential anxiety and its aspirations toward commercial rock superstardom. i do think floyd were good at the existential stuff when they committed to it, but this dreary, groovy, comfortable thing doesn't deliver on the promises of the intro, and the lyrics are embarrassingly on-the-nose in places (not to mention those cringily pretentious soul backing vocals). it's also one of the most famous songs ever, with the exact same title as this theme, and you're losing points for that yo. 3/10
Ultravox - All Stood Still
never heard this one before. like a lot of new wave stuff it's too quirky and slight and 'danceable' for my tastes, but it's fun, eerie, cleverly constructed and a creative pick for the theme. 7/10
Low - Time Is the Diamond
bland alt-rock put under a general anaesthetic. the idea of slowcore appeals to me and i do like some of the other staples of the genre, but i've never been impressed by this band, and this hasn't changed that. the bluesy vocal lines rub me the wrong way in this context and it never does anything interesting. 4/10
Kult - Komu Bije Dzwon
bim bom ba be be be bom. darken probably hums this while he's bathing 14 year old girls in his wooden tub. 8/10
The Kinks - All Day and All of the Night
obviously better than the song it's often (very dubiously) accused of ripping off, but i'm more of a 'waterloo sunset' kind of guy. actually, fuck it, i'm more of a stooges kinda guy (and there are half a dozen songs on pretty much every garage nuggets comp that i like more than this too). still good though. not convinced it really fits the theme. 6/10
Of Montreal - The Past Is a Grotesque Animal
i knew some asswipe would pick a 12 minute song. i don't mind the hook or the synth noodling at the end, but the lyrics are insufferable hipster garbage. is this a mort pick? 4/10
The Beatles - Yesterday
for all its overexposure this remains a pretty lovely song, the understated arrangement really brings out the despairing nostalgia and a lot of bands (coughOFMONTREALcough) could take some lessons about economy from this. i considered downgrading for obviousness but i actually wasn't expecting anyone around here to pick this so w/e. 7/10
Huey Lewis and the News - Back in Time
lool i should've known someone would pick this. i haven't seen this movie in so long, i should really do something about that. song is glorious '80s trash ofc. 7/10
Joy Division - Twenty Four Hours
lmao i love the transition from that to this. i think joy division were a hopeless pop band. 'love will tear us apart' is drivel. they weren't very good at punk either for the most part. but this... this album and this song are something else entirely. this is pure despair, resignation. it's the music of a man who's already dead inside, already going cold, already 'watched it all slip away'. some of the most personal, dark and downright broken music ever, perfect to the very last note. possibly my second favourite song of the game so far after lee moses. "just for one moment, i heard somebody call... looked beyond the day in hand, there's nothing there at all..." 10/10
Uriah Heep - Traveller in Time
love the heep! if you don't then sort your life out m8s. 8/10
Iannis Xenakis - Metastasis
pretty cool concept i guess, and it's unstable and apocalyptic in a way i can dig, but i don't feel like i have the frame of reference to differentiate it from a lot of other more atonal music. more fundamentally i just don't care about music on a theoretical level, and when you start composing based on rules of maths or probability you're always gonna lose me. 6/10
Hawkwind - We Took the Wrong Step Years Ago
not one of the songs i like on that record. typically great '70s production helps, but it's just too navel-gazey and generally too familiar aside from the tacked on spacey effects. 5/10
The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Time Warp
i'm actually really ignorant of rocky horror, my exposure to this is almost entirely through school discos. i quite like it, it's endearingly nutty and i don't mind camp that knows it's camp. 6/10
Chelsea Wolfe - The Way We Used To
i quite like the chelsea wolfe i've heard, and i like this more than any of that. her voice is suitably ethereal and that 'hook' is like something warm and homely being recalled from a place of loss and emptiness, turned eerie by its new context. 8/10
Peeping Tom - Five Seconds
i thought we'd managed to make a non-metal playlist that didn't contain anything truly terrible, but no. 2/10