1. The Golden Age – Beck – The lethargy is deathlike, the thing about death in a body is its lack of animation, it simply stops the body and then the body decays to dust. This decay, this rotting of the self, the inertness of life is the hidden subject matter of Beck’s masterpiece.
2. Take The Night Off, etc – Laura Marling – This four song suite at the start of her last album is a different sort of inertia. For all the anger, and all the movement, the love is dead. It is inanimate.
3. The Back Seat of My Car – Paul McCartney – Time here is in a state of movement but the child and father are stopped in that one place, where they will never change from, never go away, always remain in that relationship and that time.
4. A New England – Kirsty McColl – I am writing about death so much because death is on my mind this is not a death song but Kirsty haunts it the way she haunts her Pogues song.
5. Poses – Rufus Wainwright – The coolest song ever written.
6. Police And Thieves – Junior Murvin – The original is better than the cover because the vocal is more tender and more involved.
7. All I Want – Joni Mitchell – Whether Laura has heard it or not, when Laura goes pop instead of folk, she ends up here.
8. In France They Kiss On Main Street – The most accessible song off The Hissing Of Summer Lawns is also the best, a dream of love, sex, and dancing… and youth.
9. America – A Chekhovian story of inertia and heart break and no, nobody in America has the order.
10. Sweet Baby James – Another story about dreams and death and babiesbeing rocked to sleep.