music will save yr soul, vol. I

This is the first in a semi-regular series in which I give you a mixtape homework assignment. Enjoy the music.
It's raining in Los Angeles today, and indie folk music always warms me up on dreary days, even when the music itself is so godforsakenly dreary, as many of these songs might be. I'm stretching the definition of indie folk here, blurring the lines between that, freak-folk, singer/songwriter, and even alt. country, but blurring lines is what explicating subgenres is all about.

1 Bonnie 'Prince' Billy "I See A Darkness"
I really can't say enough about the man they call Will Oldham. I think his 1999 album I See A Darkness really kicked off the indie folk thing for the 2000s, and the title track is the song around which the cycle rotates. Ever have a bestest best friend, a BFF you might say, that keeps you sane and happy like your rock, but you're friends, and you'd never tell him that for fear of crossing the line? This is a love song to him.

2 Sufjan Stevens "Romulus"
Stevens' 2003 album Greetings From Michigan...The Great Lake State is a paean to the broken Midwestern heart, beautifully written and lushly orchestrated. Mandolin, acoustic guitar, and acoustic bass weave together intricately under Stevens' delicate voice.

3 South San Gabriel "Smelling Medicinal"
I can't say enough about Will Johnson, either. The man of a million fantastic side projects put his densest, countriest self forward with SSG's debut Welcome, Convalescence. The slide guitar is a perfect fit for Johnson's gritty tenor. I don't know what the song's about; I really don't know what most Will Johnson/Centro-matic/SSG songs are about, but slide guitar pierces my heart.

4 Townes Van Zandt "Pancho & Lefty"
Really, stretching the boundaries of "indie folk" here, but if you want to talk about heart-rending, Townes is the man. I guess it really isn't that much of a stretch, as most of these wouldn't be around if Townes, Pancho and Lefty hadn't blazed the trail back in the 70s. The Live at the Old Quarter version of this is especially sublime.

5 Iron & Wine "Such Great Heights"
The Postal Service original really kills me, because I'm a sucker for good emo, but Sam Beam nails the emotion here more than Ben Gibbard ever could. This cover captures the intimacy of reflected eye-freckles better than the original's glitchtronica.

6 Joanna Newsom "Bridges & Balloons"
This is the freak shit. I don't know where the hell this subgenre came from, but all the hippie kids in San Francisco traded their turntables in for acoustic guitars, or harps in Newsom's case. You might not like this song, unless you like women singing like a 12-year-old Björk and songs about granfalloons (I especially dig the Vonnegut reference there).

7 Hayden "Wide Eyes"
Though not quite as gorgeous as Sufjan Stevens, Hayden's Elk-Lake Serenade is one lush piece of folk music. This is what Tom Waits would sound like if he hadn't freaked out in the early 80s, and if he didn't drink a glass of gravel every morning.

8 Bonnie 'Prince' Billy & Matt Sweeney "My Home Is The Sea"
Who would have thought that Sweeney would go from polishing Billy Corgan's head in Zwan to making Workingman's Dead type songs with Will Oldham? Really nice harmonies, and even some electric guitar. Also, Oldham wants you to know that his "tummy is round and firm and funny," but that's who he is.

9 Devendra Banhart "At The Hop"
Here's Joanna Newsom's best buddy and the progenitor of freak folk, though this song especially is alot calmer than some of the freakiest stuff going on up there in the Yay. Album-wise, Rejoicing In The Hands is better than Nino Rojo, but this song from the latter is Banhart's best. A song to bring you home.

10 Gravenhurst "I Turn My Face To The Forest Floor"
When it gets around Halloween in San Francisco, the freak folkers write songs like this. If you gave Xiu Xiu mandolins and Bert Jansch records and told them to turn the reverb up to 11, they'd sound like Gravenhurst.

11 Magnolia Electric Co. "Leave The City"
The band formerly known as Songs: Ohia isn't really indie folk either, but they're so nice and Neil Young-y that I couldn't help but include them. I think they stole the trumpet from In The Aeroplane Over the Sea. Imagine reversing one of those sick-in-the-city country songs and you've got the idea of this, both lyrically and musically.

12 Vetiver "Amerilie"
Another friend of Devendra and Joanna (they both play on this track), Vetiver is the least freakish of the group. Someone needs to do a doctoral dissertation explicating the lyrics of freak folk songs.

13 Patrick Wolf "Wolf Song"
I'm going to make things really weird here before we close it up, as in wood flute solos. Even within that, this song is beautiful. I don't know if Wolf is British, but he sings a little bit like a folksy Mark E. Smith. That's a horrible analogy, and maybe it only works in my head, but see if you agree. Everybody clap their hands!

14 Will Johnson "Closing Down My House"
Johnson returns near the end here with his hot solo action. This album, Vultures Await, and the last Centro-matic album are a bit less lyrically obtuse, and somehow I like that. Let Will wrap you up, and he'll never let you down, even with a simple song like this one.

15 Johnny Cash "I See A Darkness"
I'll let this song bookend the mixtape. The Man In Black picked up a bit on the indie folk thing in his American sessions, and he does an amazing cover of Will Oldham's song here. Is anything Cash does anywhere short of amazing, though? I can't talk about Cash anymore, or I'll start crying.