On Warmer Music's Spring 2014 Mix

via Chicago Colors

By this point in the year, most of my friends are pretty sick of me but this year, I'm starting to fear for my safety. As you might remember, I'm one of the few Chicagoans who is an unapologetic fan of winter. Far from a popular position in an average year, this year it was the kind of thing that had visions of torches and pitchforks dancing in Chiberians frostbitten heads.

But even after a winter as historically bleak as this one I will still defend my love of true winter because it makes the spring all that much sweeter. This morning I smiled because it was raining. Rather than snowing. In late March. Only someone whose dealt with freezer burn on their lungs could find happiness in a drippy, 40 degree day.

Indeed spring in the midwest is a brief and flighty thing that exists for, at most, six non-consecutive weeks between March and early June but it's no less glorious because of it. A long-time spring fever sufferer, I still dream every year of the utterly giddy feeling I got in college when the season's first day over 50 when I could get away with skipping an afternoon class, throwing together a mixtape and go tooling down country roads to find a place to walk amidst woods and birds.

Don't get me wrong, as a whole, spring 'round these parts is perhaps the least satisfying season. But like that girl/boy/other you always had a crush on growing up, the brief moments when the light shines on you are unbelievably heady in a ways a solid. steady relationship/season (OK, this metaphor is getting out of hand) never quite could.

To Heck With Ole Santa Claus - The On Warmer Music 2013 Christmas Mix

Well it's been quite the year here at OWM and though I have (more or less) retained my health, hearth and loved ones, it's still been somewhat of a let down. A year of wheels spinning and frustration. And, perhaps not surprisingly, those feelings are leaking their way into this mix.

It's a more downbeat collection of Christmas songs, which is fortunate because Christmas is a holiday that can actually take some sadness and melancholy and downright knife-twisting heartbreak (just wait till your hear the end of "Rudy"). To achieve that, I've gone with a lot of early country tunes which manage to combine sweet and sad in perfect proportion.

The man in the beard plays a big role in this year's mix and things don't always go well for him. People want to hit him with snowballs, shoot him with water guns, pull the beards off his mall-bound helpers and blackmail him for plutonium. Perhaps it's that broke, late twentysomething realization that, as a grownup, Santa is gone forever but so it goes.

Citronella Serenades - The On Warmer Music 2013 Summer Mix

Photo By bandoodie

In my ongoing education called “life”, last summer taught me a few lessons about that season we call summer. Having been raised mostly in the centrally aired rooms of suburbia, I appreciated summer’s heart with the unspoken assumption that, when it became overbearing, I could always retire to a nicely chilled environment to lounge and slumber in comfort. My first full summer without the convenience of AC was an unusually chilly one, which fed my hubris about my body’s ability to deal with prolonged heat. Then came summer 2012 which, like the machinations of fate in a Greek tragedy, brought me abruptly back in contact with my own fallibility.

Days were spent baking next to box fans that circulated furnace-ready air in a pitiful attempt to provide an illusion of coolness. Nights were spent trying to sleep whilst sweating through my sheets. It's hard to describe just how dispiriting to wake up from a night of unrestful slumber to find oneself already soaked in a sweat that you know will be your constant companion all day, save for a few mercifully cool showers. Also, it's hard to over-emphasize just how satisfying it is to step into one of a few cool showers on a sweltering summer day.

This year I finally broke down and accepted an excess window unit from a friend, but I've determined to only use it on truly uncomfortable nights. There's something satisfying about getting to know the heat and sun. About living with a raised body temperature for a few months. Around this time of year I often feel like a solar camel, soaking in heat now so I can draw on that feeling in six months when I'm stamping my feet at a cold bus stop and cursing myself for forgetting my gloves.

So here we are again, Chicago, sweaty-but-happy and overwhelmed by street fests and cookouts. May this celebration of summer society keep you warm until next year!

On Warmer Music's Travel Mix - Side A: Maps & Legends

Spring will arrive Chicago. I promise it will get here.

I get a lot of crap from my friends for my unrepentant winter-boosterism and fairly so, but everyone knows that the best part of a good Midwestern winter is how much sweeter it makes the spring.

There's something so completely and utterly-joyful about the first warm, sunny day after a long winter. When the grass is still brown and the trees bare but the air tells you that better things are coming. If there were a way to bottle the feeling of walking around in a tee shirt for the first time, it would be the hottest thing since sliced crack.

On Warmer Music's Favorite Albums of 2012 [7-1]

Well, better late than never, right? As always, life has kept me busier than I could have possibly imagined this past year and, given that I'm posting this eleven days into the new year, 2013 looks to be no different. Although there was a lot of great music this year, my two favorite albums were from local artists who meant a lot to me not just as a music fan but as a writer who was blessed with the opportunity to write about each of them - a lot. Until next year music fans!

On Warmer Music's Favorite Songs of 2012 [10-1]

Finally, we have arrived at my ten favorite jams from these past twelve months. And not only that, we've got all thirty songs available in one easy mix for your rocking pleasure, enjoy!

Download all 30 Songs As A .RAR
See Songs 30-21
See Songs 20-11

On Warmer Music's Official Halloween 2012 Mixtape

I have mixed feelings about Halloween. Although I do love autumn and have a strong appreciation for cheap Gothic horror, the glee with which my fellow Millenials have embraced the holiday does give me pause. There's something about the mixture of premature childhood nostalgia, wittier-than-thou ironic costuming and hardcore drinking that makes the whole thing smack of the Peter Pan Syndrome that is one of my generation's least-appealing qualities. (Insert Peter Pan costume joke here.)

Of course, at a certain point you either have to shit or get off the pot and I know that the combined forces of candy lovers, costume mavens and a consumer society in desperate need of a post-back-to-school, pre-Christmas cash cow means that Halloween as we know it is here to stay, so I might as well enjoy it. With that in mind, I'm hereby presenting you with your official Halloween party mix. Take an hour and sample a celebration of serial killers, infanticide, kosher lycanism and cerebral consumption.

"Jeff Davis County Blues" - Mountain Goats

I'm sweating as I write this. Even sitting next to my propped-open window as it clamps down tight to cradle a humming box fan, I can still feel the day's trapped heat leaking out of streets and sidewalks. Living with heat like this wasn't a skill I learned growing up, as I was always ensconced in the artificial chill of air-conditioning at home or school. It wasn't until I started driving in high school that I really began to dig the heat. I'd drive to my baseball games or, later on, home from work on a grounds crew and, even though I was already soaked with sweat, I'd leave the windows down. After a while I would start to thrive on the heat, enjoying the way it surrounds you like a physical medium and how it allows you to live intensely in the moment.

On Warmer Music's Summer 2012 Mix

Now the thing about summer mixes is that no matter what you chose, you're guaranteed to have more good songs that you had to leave off than you could include. For someone like me, this can be vastly frustrating unless you can make yourself see it as ultimately liberating - no matter what you're gonna have to skip things so you might as well just pick what you like. It's an incredibly rich vein from which to mine pop culture as youth, America, writers and nostalgia all tend to trade strongly in summer images. Everyone loves either reliving their past glories or just reveling in the warm bounties of their present situation.

Within this mix you will hear: an "r" rolled for over five seconds, complaints about work, an ode to insects, more horns that you might expect, a great Irish song called "Dancing In The Moonlight" NOT by Van Morrison, a mind-blowing unreleased Mountain Goats song, Wilco get raunchy(ish) and probably some people expressing fondness for increased amounts of sunshine. Enjoy!

On Warmer Music's Favorite Songs of 2011 [20-11]

Welcome to the second installment of On Warmer Music's favorite songs of this year. Before we get started, first a quick review.


[See Tracks 30-21]
30. Cold Rain - Talib Kweli
29. Summer Song - Matt Duncan
28. Baby's Arms - Kurt Vile
27. Holy Holy - Wye Oak
26. Freaks and Geeks - Childish Gambino
25. I Wanna Meet Dave Grohl - Wavves
24. Midnight City - M83
23. Time Is Right - The Feelies
22. Weekend - Smith Westerns
21. Metropolis - Illinois


And now, on to the next ten!

The Best Of A.V. Undercover

You'll never find a bigger sucker for covers than Your Narrator, so when my beloved, Onion AV Club announced last year that it was starting a series commissioning covers of classic and "new classic" songs, I couldn't have been happier. The premise was even bolstered by the fact that they would all be covered in a room in the AV Club's Chicago offices that was decorated as one of the greatest flags in the world. 


The rules for this contest were a little odd - there was a list of songs and bands would be invited to pick a song to cover from an ever-shrinking list, meaning that there were more than a few odd fits. The results of the first round were successful enough that a second round of covers was commissioned this year, which concludes today with the Fruit Bats' cover of "The Other Woman". Overall, the results were mixed, there were some faithful and nice takes, a few workmanlike covers and a few more that just missed the mark - wildly. And to be fair, a lot of times covers that are great fun live when you just wanna dance, fall flat on a computer screen when you have the original a click away.


But there were enough amazing moments to make the project worthwhile and today i bring the top six, countdown-style. You can watch the videos and download the songs after the jump.

Six Song Six-Pack (Pt. 1) - When A Man Takes A Wife It's Like Going To Jail For Life

When I was growing up my nana had a saying, "take your time friend of mine" that I soon adopted and used as my own for years. It wasn't until I was nearly out of college that she told me the beginning of the saying - "when a man takes a wife, it's like going to jail for life, take your time, friend of mine." An interesting twist, but also one from a bygone era, one where divorce was rare and adolescence didn't stretch across one's twenties.

I tell this tale because this weekend I'm heading down to St. Louis for the wedding of one of my closest childhood friends. As I've been sweating over writing my toast, I've been listening to wedding songs to get me in the mood. Of course, not all of them are really the best way to prepare to celebrate love and I wanted to get them out of my system early. Today I'm sending you six songs guarenteed to sour you on marriage before giving you the good stuff tomorrow with six love songs so heart-melting they'll have you flying to Vegas for a quickie wedding with the next good-looking guy/girl who walks by. Enjoy!