LateNightTales

by

Various Artists and Various Artists

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This is one of the most worthwhile CD's I've purchased all year. Initially, I was skeptical (it seemed to me that a sampler of this kind should run about a penny under ten bucks) but a month and a half after I picked it up, I'm still listening to it on a daily basis. It's *almost* a textbook example of how you make a mix CD.

The theme is all in the vibe, which is mellow, world weary and yet hopeful. Almost every song locks neatly into the one that follows like trains cars being linked together. When you achieve that kind of music mix synchronization, the great songs bring out the ones that are only good and improve upon them.

Highlights? Miles Davis, "My Ship," from the Miles Ahead album he made with Gil Evans. It shouldn't fit between Bjork and Chris Bell, but somehow it does.

Speaking of Chris Bell, this disc serves up his "Speed of Sound," which -- with its sublime synthesizer solo (yeah, I actually wrote "sublime synthesizer solo" and I mean it) -- I liked so much I eventually had to dig out my long neglected copy of "I Am The Cosmos." Bell leads into Faust (sounding for all the world like Gordon Lightfoot) and Faust leads into a Roxy Music tune I'd never heard but now love.

The mix also gets huge points from me for including both my favorite Radiohead ("Pyramid Song") and my favorite Nick Drake song ("River Man"). It also gets away with copping a little 10CC, somehow, and the mood doesn't break or miss a beat at all.

But the best thing a mix can do is gradually, gracefully introduce the listener to songs they don't know, and in this case it's Alfie's "People," which includes an *incredible* harmony about halfway through, and Lush's "Monochrome."

Oddly enough, the one song that I can't recommend is a Lips song. Don't get me wrong (don't hit that "no" button just yet if you haven't already) it's a perfectly solid, raucous cover but, sequenced right into the middle of the disc, it just doesn't fit into this mix and it sticks out like a sore thumb, completely breaks the mood. Which, knowing Wayne Coyne (and given that the song opens with a blaring siren) might be the whole point, who knows?