Whenever I get a playlist I listen for a governing intelligence in the choices and from Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” to the Shin’s “Caring Is Creepy” there is an overiding pleasure in melodic guitar work here. “Caring Is Creepy” is the first song off the Shins first album Oh, Inverted World and, while we were still getting used to Mercer’s weirdness, it sounded like Belle And Sebastian unable to figure out where to put the drum: almost inverted indeed, “Caring Is Creepy” bops to the side of the song. Mazzy Star, as always, sound like 10,000 maniacs going for a stroll, which is not to say “Fade Into You” doesn’t have it’s angelic qualities.
And so we move along to another song, the Smoling Popes “I Need You Around” from 1995, and perhaps we have found a running theme: The softer side of 90s grunge (even if it wasn’t recorded during the grunge period, though this one was).
There is so much gentleness to these songs, so many good vibes. Whether it be the so calming it’s ambient “Porcelain” by Moby or the choice of “Lucky Man” as opposed to, say, “The Drugs Don’t Work” off the Verve’s Urban Hymn’s, Darcee needs easiness and serenity in her sounds. This pacific quality, this good vibration, which surrounds darcie is immediately apparent in her highly successful career as a counsellor for people with drug abuse problems, and is even more apparent for those of us fortunate to share in her company.
And even when Darceeis upset, say her Beck choice, off Brett and mine fave album Sea Changes, “Lost Cause” it is lovelier and sweeter tasting than my fave on the album, the suicidal “The Golden Age”. The song is sad and deep and a little lost, like most of everything on an album I consider the equal of Odelay. Here is the url http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMgRp3zun6Y&NR=1
The names of the musicians on Darcee’s list are alone enough to make my ears perk up. Bjork, Ani DiFranco, Keb Mo’ and, somewhere out of left field, Dusty Springfield.
And only when she gets to Ani DiFranco does it get a little too estrogenized for my tastes -er, Darcee, keep to “Untouchable Face” when it comes to Ani otherwise she morphs into a female dave mathews and that’s, like, yucky.
This year Ms. Nevin was celebrated as the councelor of the year at the Association for Addiction Specialists. She works at the Counsel For Alcohol and drug Abuse counselling in Chatanooga, Tn. Darcee explained: “Now I am in a full time position and work primarily with Federal Offenders who are either still in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons, are on supervised release, or in pre-trial status, facilitating both group and individual sessions for this population.” If I cann the young lady an angel I know what I’m talking about.
So let’s put on the best white soul singer of all time singing spooky and sign off with a thank you to the very wonderful indeed Darcie Nevin: angels never leave heaven but Darcee comes real close.
Darcee Nevin’s Playlist:
The Adventure/ Angels and Airwaves
Lucky Man/ Verve
Fade Into You/ Mazzy Star
Porceline/ Moby
Soul One/ Blind Melon
Lost Cause/ Beck
Comfort Me/ Sparkle Horse
Need You Around/ Smoking Popes
Spooky/ Dusty Springfield
I Just Don’t Think… / Colin Haye
Rise/ Eddy Vedder
Falling is Like This/ Ani Difranco
It’s Not Up to You/ Bijork
Such Great Hights/ Iron & Wine
Chocolate/ Snow Patrol
Every Morning/ Keb’ Mo’
Caring is Creepy/ Shins
School Night/ Ani
Run/ Snow Patrol
Track 20/ Lock Stock and 2 Smoking Barrells
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