Alphabet Soup: A New Weekly Playlist Series!

Welcome to my new alphabetical playlist series which splits the year into 26 two-week chunks and fills each chunk with a 10-track playlist, week one by artist name and week two by track name.

In the last couple days of 2023, while enjoying a group hike in the semi-desert of the highlands between Wadi Al Fayd and Petra in Jordan, my thoughts turned toward the direction in which I might like to take this Substack in 2024. One thing was clear: I wanted to introduce a regular playlist series, one which wouldn’t be too demanding to prepare, and one which I could easily stay on top of on a weekly basis.

In a eureka moment I realized that 52 weeks in a year is perfectly divisible into the 26 letters of the alphabet, meaning I could dedicate two weeks to each letter. I decided I’d assign week one of each letter to artist names and week two to track names. Pretty easy! Then I began wondering how on earth I could possibly narrow the vast musical universe down to something manageable. In another burst of inspiration, I decided I’d base my selections on the CDs we used to have in our physical collection.

Prior to ripping everything to mp3 sometime around 2010, my wife and I had managed to amass a collection of 2000 to 2500 CD’s which were housed floor to ceiling on wall mounted shelving (probably 30+ linear feet of shelving). I used to love spending time next to the CD shelves looking for musical inspiration. Everything was arranged alphabetically, and I’d scan side to side and up and down trying to decide what I wanted to listen to that day. As something grabbed my attention, I’d pull the CD case out from the stack a little bit and move on. Within 10-15 minutes I might have a dozen CDs ready to play over the course of the day/evening/weekend until I was ready for something new. I sometimes miss the simplicity of those days.

Thankfully all of my previously ripped CDs are sitting in a distinct folder on my media server which will be easy to dip into for each installment. I expect this to be a very free-form exercise for me. As and when the urge strikes over the course of each week I’ll trawl through the folder and come up with an artist and track that appeals to me in the moment and add it to my list. Once I’ve managed to pull together 12 to 15 tracks I’ll narrow it down to a list of ten while trying to construct an appropriately sequenced playlist, which may not always be possible depending on the tracks I end up with.

Now that I’ve laid the table, let’s discuss what the musical menu has in store for you! Drawn primarily from the 20-year period between 1990 and 2010, you can expect generous portions of Canadian music, along with helpings of trip-hop, chillout, and downtempo, accompanied by copious sides of nu metal and alternative rock. You’ll be refreshed by pairings of 70s and 80s tunes from our cellar of compilation albums. And to satisfy that sweet tooth, be ready for a delectable and delightful selection of reggae and dub tracks. Bon Appetit!!

Given that we’re already in the second week of the year, this first installment is a double batch: ten artists beginning with the letter A followed by ten tracks beginning with the letter A. Going forward, each new installment, which will arrive in your inbox every Wednesday, will be a single playlist comprising ten tracks with a little verbiage for each track. I’ll be providing an embedded Spotify link for each track (or a YouTube link if the track isn’t available on Spotify).

I’ve started a master Alphabet Soup 2024 Spotify playlist which I’ll be updating as each weekly installment is released. You’ll find that Spotify playlist embedded at the end of each week’s entry.

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ALPHABET SOUP WEEK 01: Artists Filed Under A

ARTIST: Alphaville

TRACK: “Summer in Berlin” from Forever Young (1984)

It’s a long story, best saved for a long-form article (one which I’ve been wanting to write for a long time), but the lead track from Alphaville’s 1994 debut Forever Young holds a very special place in my heart. The album itself is a stunning debut, one of my favorites from the entire decade.

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ARTIST: Air

TRACK: “All I Need” from Moon Safari (1998)

The way too obvious choice from this album would’ve been the debut single Sexy Boy, which was the French duo’s highest charting single. But for my tastes, All I Need is the better track.

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ARTIST: Archive

TRACK: “All Time” from Londinium (1996)

Floating in on the early second-wave of trip-hop, Archive delivered an instant classic with their debut 1996 album Londinium. They’ve broken up and reformed multiple times over the years and while they’ve released 12 studio albums in their various incarnations none has come close to this album for me.

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As you make your way through this week’s playlist, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do any of these tracks really stand out for you? What do you like? What don’t you like?

Please click the button below to leave a comment.

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ARTIST: Airlock

TRACK: “Alpha” from Drystar (2001)

Late-era trip hop from Belgium’s Drystar’s 2001 debut, which remains my favorite of their three releases.

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ARTIST: Autour de Lucie

TRACK: “Immobile” from Immobile (1997)

I first heard the breezy French pop of the Paris trio Autour de Lucie when Chansons sans issue (Ne vois tu pas) was included on the CD sampler bundled with the March 1998 installment of CMJ New Music Monthly (back in the more manual music discovery days). Getting rid of my dozens of CMJ sampler CDs without first digitizing them may be one of my biggest regrets of moving into the digital music era. Thankfully Oliver has recreated a bunch of CMJ New Music Monthly playlists on Spotify (and there’s also a massive single CMJ playlist here)

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ARTIST: Ani DiFranco

TRACK: “Fire Door” from Living In Clip (1997)

After seeing Ani live at Albany’s Palace Theatre in April 1998, in what was a tightly packed, sweaty, screamy, explosion of a concert, I couldn’t get enough of her 2-CD live album Living In Clip (Rolling Stone named it “one of The Essential Recordings of the 90s”). As a result, this live version of Fire Door, which originally appeared on her 1990 self-titled solo debut, has become the definitive version for me.

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ARTIST: Aimee Mann

TRACK: “How Am I Different?” from Bachelor No. 2 (2000)

I haven’t researched the song so it’s not clear what Aimee Mann is singing about on this amazing track. She could be singing to the person trying to pick her up in a bar. It could be a conversation with a partner before/ during a breakup, or even after a reconciliation. Or given her history, it could be related to a fraught conversation with her management company. What I do know is that Aimee isn’t convinced. She’s not having it. And she lets the listener know it, with what has to be one of my favorite lyrical barbs of the decade: “And just one question before I pack / When you fuck it up later / Do I get my money back?”

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ARTIST: Audioslave

TRACK: “I Am the Highway” from Audioslave (2002)

I find the “supergroup” moniker is often overdone but in the case of Audioslave, comprising Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell (RIP) and RATM’s Tom Morello, Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk, it’s more than apt. I expected to be (and was) impressed with Cornell’s vocals, but what really blew me away was the sounds that Morello manages to squeeze out of his guitar, just absolutely mind-blowing.

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ARTIST: Ashley MacIsaac

TRACK: “Sleepy Maggie” from Hi, How Are You Today (1995)

Hailing from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Ashley MacIsaac had a smash hit with 1995’s Hi, How Are You Today, which went two times platinum in Canada. I only managed to see him live once as the fantastic opening act for Melissa Etheridge when she performed at the Halifax Metro Centre in March 1996.

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ARTIST: Alice In Chains

TRACK: “Nutshell” from Jar of Flies (1994)

Layne Staley the charismatic and phenomenal lead singer of Alice in Chains tragically died of a heroin/cocaine overdose in April 2002. Within the context of Staley’s death, the lyrics to 1994’s Nutshell are simply devastating:

“We chase misprinted lies / We face the path of time

And yet I fight, and yet I fight

This battle all alone / No one to cry to / No place to call home”

“My gift of self is raped / My privacy is raked

And yet I find, and yet I find

Repeating in my head / If I can't be my own / I'd feel better dead”

In 2020, long-time friend and fellow musician Mark Lanegan (RIP) teamed up with Danish guitarist Maggie Björklund in what, to me, is one of the finest cover versions of any song ever made. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and spend the next 4:33 with this piece of magic:

In the epilogue to his harrowing 2020 autobiography Sing Backwards and Weep, Lanegan writes of receiving the phone call in which he found out Staley was dead: “It was a call I had expected for years but it destroyed me nonetheless. His loss left a void I’ve felt every day since. I expect I always will.”

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ALPHABET SOUP WEEK 02: The A Tracks

TRACK: “Air of December” from Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars (1988)

ARTIST: Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians

My music collection was fairly limited in the late 80s, but Edie Brickell’s debut album was a valued addition to my cassette library, later finding its way into my collection in CD format. What I Am was the smash hit from the album, reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and peaking at the top spot in Canada. For me there’s not a bad track on the album but Air of December, definitely a deep cut, is one of my favorites.

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TRACK: “Allegory” from DGC Rarities Vol 1. (1994)

ARTIST: Murray Attaway

Allegory appears on the first rarities collection issued by the DGC Records (David Geffen Company) label in 1994. It’s the only solo track I’ve ever heard from Murray Attaway, perhaps best known as the lead singer of jangle pop band Guadalcanal Diary, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately, the track doesn’t appear on Spotify so won’t be on the running playlist.

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TRACK: “Adia” from Surfacing (1997)

ARTIST: Sarah McLachlan

Here’s the first in a three-pack of Canadian artists, all of whom are from Halifax, where I attended university. Adia is from Sarah McLachlan’s fourth album, 1997’s Surfacing. The higher charting, and more critically acclaimed track, Angel would have been the obvious choice here, but it’s been played to death and has lost some of its shine for me as a result.

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TRACK: “Autobiography” from From One Chord to Another (1996)

ARTIST: Sloan

I remember Sloan being huge in Halifax in the mid 90’s, certainly within the circles I was in at the time. While I never listened to their debut album, Smeared, I was all over their next three studio albums, particularly 1996’s From One Chord to Another, the first released on the independent record label Murderecords they created after leaving Geffen. If you’re new to the band and this album, I highly recommend also checking out The Good in Everyone and Everything You’ve Done Wrong, both of which are outstanding tracks.

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TRACK: “Ali” from So Wound (1996)

ARTIST: Jale

Jale, their name an acronym created from the first letter of each of the band members’ names (Jennifer Pierce, Alyson MacLeod, Laura Stein, Eve Hartling), had three stellar releases (one EP and two albums) from 1994 to 1996. Pierce had previously sung backing vocals on Sloan’s first album and the 1995 Closed EP was the 18th release on that band’s Murderecords label. Ali is taken from their final album 1996’s So Wound, the second album the band released on Sub Pop Records.

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TRACK: “Airbag” from OK Computer (1997)

ARTIST: Radiohead

In April 1997, as a broke heavily indebted recent college grad, I travelled to New York to watch Ani DiFranco perform in Albany (priorities amiright?). Later that week I found out Radiohead were playing two dates at Radio City Music Hall. By this point I’d already been down in NYC (my first ever visit) for a few days and after the Ani concert, a tattoo, a piercing, a couple nights of jazz at Small’s (on top of the cost of the tiny dive hotel room I was sharing with two friends), I was pretty skint. On the first night of their two-night engagement, filled with a mad sense of hope, four of us decided to head over to the venue to see if we could score some cheap tickets.

Shortly after splitting into two groups of two to start scoping the scalper sitch, we were approached by a young woman who asked us whether we wanted tickets. She explained she got free tickets from her job at MTV but wasn’t able to go to the show. When I asked how much she wanted, she said, “they’re free! I can’t use them so go ahead and have a great time!” Row 15, center section. Hot damn! At the same time our two other friends had scored a pair of great tickets at face value from a couple guys that couldn’t attend and just wanted to make their money back on their tix. Four tickets for a total of $60. Absolute Jackpot!!

After a stunner of an opening set from Spiritualized, Radiohead kicked off with Airbag, the lead track from OK Computer, which remains my favorite Radiohead album (don’t @ me!). They went on to play an additional 20 tracks including the single Pearly (performed live only a handful of times since that tour) and an early version of Nude, which wouldn’t see an official release until it appeared on 2008’s In Rainbows. It was an incredible concert, quite possibly still a top ten for me, a transcendent experience.

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TRACK: “Angel From Montgomery” from Don't Cry Too Hard (1990)

ARTIST: Leslie Spit Treeo

We return to the great white north, this time to Ontario in the form of Toronto’s Leslie Spit Treeo. The band received some heavy airplay on MuchMusic with UFO (Catch the Highway), the track which first caught my ear and piqued my interest enough to buy the album. While that remains a great track, the standout is an absolute BANGER of a cover of John Prine’s Angel From Montgomery. It’s a blistering rendition!

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TRACK: “All I Ever Wanted” from Mama Said (1991)

ARTIST: Lenny Kravitz

A love letter of a song in a love letter of an album, penned by the lovesick Lenny for his beloved Lisa.

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TRACK: “All That We Perceive” from The Richest Man in Babylon (2002)

ARTIST: Thievery Corporation

The Richest Man in Babylon is the third studio album by American electronic music duo Thievery Corporation and is probably my favorite release from them. I was lucky enough to catch them live in concert at The Roundhouse in London in March 2017 in what was a stunning show. My only time at that venue and the acoustics were some of the best I’ve ever heard anywhere. My little video sampler from the show:

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TRACK: “Africa Unite” from Survival (1979)

ARTIST: Bob Marley & the Wailers

Wrapping up this week’s double serving of Alphabet Soup with Africa Unite from Survival, Bob Marley’s eleventh studio album released in 1979. A paean to pan-African unity with a more militant (justifiably so) tone than his prior release Kaya, Marley meditates on the historical struggles of Black peoples and makes a powerful plea for African liberation and unification.

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Here’s the running playlist which will be updated on a weekly basis as each new installment is published.

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Thank you for reading Joy in the Journey, I appreciate you being here! If there’s someone in your life you think may enjoy this post, feel free to share it.