Broadcast - According to No Plan
i suspect there's a little too much icy drug-addled '60s revival here for me, i can't get my head around it sober aside from finding it subtly semi-affecting and a lovely pick for the theme. 7/10
Split Enz - One Step Ahead
i didn't know of this band before hearing about them on here a few times now. this one is also very '60s melodically speaking, but better. 8/10
John WIlliams - Usher Waltz
russian classical guitar? sign me up. i suppose i'd rather just listen to old school renaissance stuff like dowland or whatever but this is cool and better suited to the theme. 7/10
Pixies - Where Is My Mind
probably my favourite of their big hits, despite how pop culture has attempted to ruin it. helps that it's one of their only songs that feels fully-formed and ready for release, rather than a fragment or practice run like usual. that looseness is part of their charm of course but it's also regularly frustrating. this reminds me i still need to listen to BOSSANOVA. 9/10
David Thomas - Semaphore
i worship early ubu. this is more like a clown doing ubu covers at a child's birthday party. that's pretty confusing, i'll give you that. i liked the slow part in the middle. 6/10
Jamin Winans - Recognize
pretty generic and not noticeably thematic. i haven't seen the movie either. 4/10
Wipers - What Is
this isn't their best song or anything but fuck i love them so much. the most emotionally charged punk band ever, with some of the most beautifully melancholic guitarwork in music history. they did existential angst better than just about anybody. 9/10
The Who - I Can't Explain
my preferred who era by far, but not one of their better songs from it. pretty much a kinks rip-off, and i didn't care for that era of the kinks all that much anyway. slightly pushing it thematically IMO, it's more about the impossibility of expressing love than any kind of overall confusion (he literally says the phrase "i know what it means"). 4/10
Gentle Giant - I Lost My Head
i assume this'll win, and not undeservedly. 8/10
Buzzcocks - I Don't Know What to Do With My Life
this sounds more dead kens than the album i've heard (the debut), did they influence each other at all or was it a case of both sharing influences? either way it's welcome. still too poppy and palatable for my tastes, but i'm surprised by how much i like this. 7/10
Tim Buckley - Hallucinations
i've heard every tim buckley album and at the time i preferred his early work (inc. this album), which is bigger and dumber and more blatantly derived from '60s psych, but also less boring than his more subtle, meditative and experimental later work. whether i'd still feel that way now idk, but this is less theatrical and more evocative than i remember this album being, and great for the theme. 8/10
Bob Dylan - Ballad of a Thin Man
unlike most here i don't like this version quite as much, or at least not for this theme. it's more fiery and impassioned and rockish with a better guitar sound but that doesn't serve the surrealism of the lyrics as well as the lumbering, farcical repetition of the studio version (which, in fairness, isn't on youtube). both are great in their own ways though - this version actually reminds me of what hendrix did to 'all along the watchtower', a cover dylan himself worshipped and probably attempted to emulate quite a bit live. incidentally, the studio version of this was my other choice for the surrealism round, and is actually rather similar to the procol harum song i ended up submitting. i've overplayed this album to high hell but i've gotta ten it really. 10/10