Sundance 2008 line-up announced

The slate of films chosen to represent the Sundance Film Festival in 2008 were released today, jostling a jolt of excitement in me. I don't know why I neglected the festival for so long, being a lover of movies and living along the Wasatch Front, but once I finally braved the traffic and cold January ticket lines, I was hooked. It's always hard to tell what will be good and what won't, which is why it's good to get some word-of-mouth advice from fellow festival patrons. This year there is a Chuck Palahniuk adaptation (Choke), a new Michel Gondry film, some off-beat comedies (there's almost a Sundance Quirky Comedy genre now), dysfunctional family dramas, U2 in 3-D, and documentaries about linguists, gang violence in South L.A., steroids, Hunter Thompson, rural Russian delenquints, water, and Morgan "Supersize Me" Spurlock searching for Osama bin Laden. Should be an interesting year. I've learned a few things in my few festivals as attendee (links to the 2008 line-up below):

1)It's best to see the films that may not get a wide-release rather than the star-driven vehicles that will show up in the local movieplex a couple of months (or even weeks) after the festival - this generally means more foriegn-language and lower-budget ones for me.

2)Documentaries are the easy-to-get-into, hidden gems of the festival. I've seen my share of pretty bad to mediocore dramatic features, but all of the docs I've seen have been anywhere from good to absolutely riveting.

3) It's nice to get your tickets in advance, but there's also something about wait-listing your way in. This usually means showing up two hours before the screening, getting a piece of paper with your designated number and hoping that some people don't show up for the screening. There's only been a couple that I haven't gotten into, but luckily there's generally another movie starting soon somewhere nearby to catch as a back-up. Last year I was able to see my two favorites, "Once" and "In The Shadow of the Moon" by wait-listing. Plus, wait-listing is a good way to meet some fellow film buffs who have traveled from all around the country or world to be there, as well as a lot of the filmmakers who are also taking in the festival.

4) Stick around for the question-and-answer sessions after the movies. These are what makes festivals like Sundance so cool. Getting into the filmmakers and actors motiviations and desires while making the movies can be extremely interesting and sometimes hilarious. You'll hear behind-the-scenes stories that will never show up in the DVD extras.

5) Don't waste your time star-gazing/stalking. You're just as likely to see that untalented harlot sipping a soy latte at a local coffee shop as you are standing outside Harry O's for three hours in the cold wating for her to stumble out after an invite-only Snoop Dogg set. Celebrities and psuedo-celebrities are freaking everywhere in Park City during Sundance. Go to the movies and you'll be just as likely to see them if that's what you want.

6) Check out Slamdance Film Festival, Sundance's first (and best) offspring. I discovered it while reviewing for the University of Utah's student rag, the Daily Utah Chronicle, and saw a couple of good movies and one that was better than most Sundance dramatic entries. It's what I imagine Sundance was like fifteen or twenty years ago, before any company with a new product line to schill devoured the streets of Park City. The films will be announced December 5th. It has a cool do-it-yourself vibe and it's cheaper and has much better access to the filmmakers than Sundance.

I'll be reviewing what I see, with daily updates, right here at Concrete Fiction once the festival gets going.

Here is a list of competition films at this years festival (Documentary, Dramatic, World Cinema Documentary, World Cinema Dramatic).

You can find the list of non-competition films (Premiers, New Frontier, Spectrum, Park City at Midnight) on this page.

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In the spirit of the upcoming festival, here are a few songs that have appeared in Sundance movies I've seen in the last couple of years. (Song links at bottom of post.)

First is M. Ward and his song "Carolina" from the movie "The Go-Getter", a 2007 selection starring Lou Taylor Pucci, Zoey Daschanel and Jena Malone. Ward and his band are featured heavily throughout the film, and they even make a cameo near the beginning. This is a movie worth seeing when it gets picked up.

Then we have Gogol Bordello's "Through the Roof and Underground", a song that plays prominently in the 2006 Sundance alum (and recent release) Wristcutters: A Love Story. Gogol Bordello is a true treat live, something I learned not long after being introduced to them simaltaneously through this movie and my buddy. Bandleader Eugene Hutz was in They are part circus-act, part immigrant folk troupe, part pure dub-punk energy when they hit the stage. Don't miss them if you get the chance.

Finally, we get Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová's "When Your Mind's Made Up" from the brilliantly understated musical love story, Once. I've written about this film a bit elsewhere on this blog, but let me just say, Hansard and Irglová are pure magic onscreen. A must-see.

Sundance Songs:

M. Ward - Carolina

Gogol Bordello - Through the Roof and Underground

Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová - When Your Mind's Made Up

Winter here to stay? Andrew Bird is!

There's something about a physical, visual finality of metamorphosis that is so beautiful. Along the Wasatch Front tonight, we were witness to what could be called the end of autumn and the beginning of winter. After weeks of hearing about ski resorts pushing back their opening dates and the predictions of future drought from climatologists, we were finally treated to the first real snow of the season.

Before now, there have been flakes in the air, but not much stuck. While this wasn't exactly a substantial snowstorm, there is a good couple of inches that managed to stick on the ground. It's quite late in the year for the snow to finally signal winter is around the corner, it seems like there's usually a good storm pre-Halloween. But I walked out of work this evening excited and entranced. The snow was falling haphazardly, in a mad rush to get to the ground and make its claim on the season, to show the warm fall days we've been having who owns the climate now.

Autumn is my favorite season - as I've written before - but in the past couple of years, I've picked up snowshoeing, so winter has gotten a passionate boost. I wasn't really prepared for it when I first broke in my new pair a couple of years back, after about two hundred yards up a not-too-steep grade I was gasping and panting. (The first snow hike of the season is always like that and after gorging during the Thanksgiving holiday, I'm ready for a good, cold slap in the face.) But I kept it up and found the exhilaration and solace that the woods in winter time can bring. I love the way the world is muted after new-fallen snow, and outside the confines of the city, the serenity and harmony of things that this brings is magnified. Plus, bombing down a steep slope in your snowshoes with some sturdy snowboard boots to keep the ankles stiff is really something else.

So, welcome Winter, I hope you're hear to stay and bless us in Utah with mounds of that airy, dry snow that you so expertly whip up each year.



Oh, and how about cheering up your day a bit with some Andrew Bird? The folks over at Daytrotter recently lured Mr. Bird into their studio with the band Diagona backing him up and released these songs. If you've never encountered any Daytrotter Sessions before, you should definitely check out the website. A studio located in Rock Island, Illinois, it's enviously fantastic how Daytrotter gets so many relevant and masterful musicians into their quarters to re-work or lay down songs to be released free to the public. Here are the songs from the Bird Sessions. "A Breaks B" is apparently a Diagona original, to be released on a future album and "The Giant of Illinois" is a Handsome Family song, who happen to be currently on tour with Bird. The versions of these other songs are lush, interesting, but still not too-foreign from the album originals. "Fiery Crash" in particular is allowed to take a little more meditative time compared to the more urgent take on Armchair Apocrypha.

Fiery Crash (Daytrotter Sessions)
Lull (Daytrotter Sessions)
A Breaks B (Daytrotter Sessions)
Pasticities (Daytrotter Sessions)
The Giant of Illinois (Daytrotter Sessions)

Rivalry Week and Why I Love Sports

I've often wondered what it is about sports that gets us (who choose to) so riled, so emotionally involved, so proud/angry over something that is, as we who participated in youth athletics were all told at one time or another, "just a game". This weekend is as good a time as any for myself to contemplate this. Rivalry week just wound up here on the Wasatch Front, when my beloved University of Utah Utes football team blew a lead for the second year in a row with under two minutes left to lose to the hated Cougars of Brigham Young University. First, a bit on the rivalry.

If you didn't grow up in the Beehive State, it's difficult to fully comprehend the depths to which this football game plunges. I would argue it's one of the best in the country. (By best I also mean worst; I mean fans acting without reason or any notion of maturity. As I'm writing this sentence, there is a news story on KSL-5 about a Ute fan who was head-butted by a Cougar fan at the game, breaking his nose.) The Utah-BYU rivalry has all the characteristics of other big rivalries in college football (usually based on in-state or geographic connection, ivy league snobbery or armed forces branches) except, just to make it even more interesting, it has become known as a religious rivalry. Some see it as the Mormons against the ubiquitous "non-members", though among us fans who are able to reconcile being a Ute fan and LDS, I would say it's generally characterized as the "regular" Mormons (Utah fans) against the "weird" Mormons (Cougar fans). That streak of religiosity, however falsely perceived, gives the game a zest of fundamentalism (on both sides) rarely seen in this country, with the exception of outside abortion clinics in the South - or in the halls of the White House.

Growing up, I was plagued by a perpetually terrible Utah football team, which meant mockery from neighbors, who also carried about a holier-than-thou attitude about choosing to root for "the Lord's school" rather than those heathens at the U. This was in the midst of Lavell Edwards' greatness, but luckily for me, the playing field began to even itself in the early nineties. Utah football improved drastically, with the pinnacle coming in 2004, and a rivalry with question as to who would win was reborn for my formative years.

Yesterday I made a trip to Provo with my brother for the annual throwdown, the third time I would witness it in Happy Valley. The first was in 1995 - the Utes won, I sat in the Cougar Club section, and a middle-aged Zoobie who was sitting a row behind smacked my friend Nate in the back of the head after we stood up to cheer for a Utah play, claiming that we "didn't know anything about the world". I'm still not sure what he meant by that, but Nate had the last laugh when he replied, "At least I know it's immature for an adult to hit a kid." Oh, and Utah won that year.

My second trip was ten years later, in 2005. I wasn't eager to go down - the Utes had just lost their starting quarterback, the season was feeling like a letdown after the literally perfect 2004 campaign and I didn't want to sit among 60,000 blue-clad freaks for four hours. I decided to go mainly as a chance to visit Megan, Tanner and Jason, who were students down there and I didn't see very often. Jason and Tanner were good men, though - Ute fans through and through. Megan and I were lucky enough to have a friendship based on a hatred of math and a love of literature, therefore I was able to look beyond her school affiliation. Jason and I used to go to Ute games together in high school, and we got to sit together among the red-wearing faithful in the western part of the north end zone. Oh, and Utah proved victorious in overtime. It was probably the best all-out football game I've ever been to.

I had high hopes for yesterday. After an extremely disappointing 1-3 start (and an open-letter blog I wrote but never posted after a 27-0 loss to UNLV), the Runnin' Utes were playing their best football in two or three years - the defense was especially amazing. And BYU was, well, BYU. Just ask any Ute fan, BYU always sucks. It was a very good game - very defense oriented, but Utah couldn't get their offense going to compliment the exemplary "D" being thrown down by Robert Johnson, Steve Tate, Stevenson Sylvester and the rest of the crew.
Then, with a minute and forty seconds left, Utah orchestrated a touchdown drive to take a 10-9 lead. BYU got the ball back and three plays later (including one sack by Sylvester), they were looking at 4th down and 18 yards to go deep in their own territory. This was it. I was elated -- laughing, smiling, hugging my brother, touching hands with other Utah fans interspersed among the Cougar faithful around me. We were jubilant. Then, in one play, it all went bad. Brice McCain blew coverage on Austin Collie, while Max Hall escaped another sack and threw a fifty-yard bomb to Collie for the first down. My heart sunk. I was devastated. My heart was broken. My faith was suddenly doused in caffeine-free Diet Coke and stomped on by metal-spiked cleats. It was only a couple of questionable calls and an eleven-yard run later that the Team Down South sealed their victory. My week was ruined.

So why did I allow this to happen? Why did I invest so much emotion, so much faith, so much purported happiness in a freakin' football game?

I think it all goes to the same reason I reach for religion -- I want to feel part of something bigger than myself, something communal, where we, the like-minded, can all dress up similarly, pass signs and physical contact among each other in our celebration and mourning. In this we hope that we might find reason among, and make sense of, all the madness in the world, all the events that are absolutely beyond our control. We are united in one common purpose. In sports, we clap and cheer, in religion we clasp our hands and bow our heads.

I'm glad I went to the game yesterday, even though we lost and I was surrounded by people in blue who represented something I don't understand or think is quite right, we were all reaching for personal fulfillment through something greater than ourselves.


Whew. Got that one off my brain. Now, here's a little playlist for the ears. I just kind of browed my music collection on the old computator and picked some songs that seemed to fit for me, here and now. It begins with a Glass solo piano work (who could ever argue against Philip Glass?!), followed by the bizzarely beautiful cut-n-paste sounds of Animal Collective. If you haven't heard them, check these guys out. Animal Collective is what happens when you put Brian Wilson in the washing machine with a Super Nintendo, the Information Age and sea water. Following is Trent Reznor's soft-loud-soft-loud "The Day the World Went Away." I've loved this song since high school, when I bought the single. The song highlights some reasons why Reznor is a great producer. Medeski, Martin and Wood, the best damn avant-jazz-funk combo around. Whenever they come to Utah, it is with a jazz festival and the stuffy, upper-crust, old-school, donating-members jazz types are pushed out of the way by the young folks dancing to MMW's infectious grooves. It's a funny sight. Then we have Humanity's Best Candidate for Elf, Joanna Newsom's closer from The Milk-Eyed Mender. I love how her voice takes precedence on this song and the delicate picking of the harp rather than grand, dramatic swoops. Closing out the mix is everyone's favorite orchestral rockers, the Canadian Marxist musical collective, Godspeed You Black Emporer! with their glorious, epic (when are they not glorious or epic, though?) opener to their masterpiece, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, "Storm".
Enjoy.

Philip Glass - Metamorphosis One
Animal Collective - Unsolved Mysteries
Nine Inch Nails - The Day The World Went Away
Medeski, Martin and Wood - Take Me Nowhere
Joanna Newsom - Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie
Godspeed You Black Emporer! - Storm

Arcade Fire on Austin City Limits This Sunday!

Every year there are one or two bands that I really get into. Not just happily introduced to or discovered, but more to the point of becoming quite fanatical about them, thrusting burned cds into strangers hands unsolicited and attempting to decipher the meaning of ambiguous lyrics long into the night. Past artists be on this prestigious list (at least to anyone who holds my opinion prestigious - I'm raising my hand) include Subtle, Calexico, Elliott Smith, Wilco, Radiohead, Bob Dylan and my first pop music obsession, The Beatles. This year, that band is Arcade Fire.

I didn't receive the band very warmly when their first album, Funeral was released. I remember hearing a track or two on public radio and feeling, just, well I guess not feeling would be the way to describe it. I can't tell you exactly why, just not the right time and situation, I suppose (though some of it had to do with the massive hype surrounding the release, I'm always wary of the Pitchfork effect in the indie rock world). However, I gave the band another go-round this spring when they released their second full-length, the inspiring, splendid Neon Bible and I was blown away. This has happened to me before (giving a band or album a second listen months or years down the line). It is actually quite cool - like discovering meaning after-the-fact, through events already trudged through (and hoped by the experiencer to never revisit).

Well, I've been enjoying a nice honeymoon with husband-wife duo/band founders Win Butler & Regine Chassagne and the rest of the Canadian crew for the past six months, absorbing all the demos and b-sides I could get my ears on. The band has a great reputation live, and this weekend they appear on the best music television show America has to offer, PBS's Austin City Limits. Here in Utah it airs on KUED-7 at midnight (technically Sunday morning) and the episode looks to be a hoot. You can check out "Keep The Car Running" on the show's website, complete with hurdy-gurdy. I've got my DVR set.

Below are some of my favorite Arcade Fire songs. I think what draws me to the band most is the ability for the music to sound like a downright celebration while the lyrics often reflect unease, uncertainty and cynicism.

It's kind of like life - at least as viewed through my eyes - a helluva a lot of suffering and doubt adorned by beauty and warmth beyond description.

Download the entire Arcade Fire playlist

or, individually:

Wake Up (from Funeral)
Keep The Car Running (from Neon Bible)
My Body is a Cage (from Neon Bible)
Surf City Eastern Bloc (from "No Cars Go" single)
Crown of Love (from Funeral)
(Antichrist Television Blues) (from Neon Bible)
Headlights Look Like Diamonds (from Arcade Fire EP)
Maps (Yeah Yeah Yeahs cover) (from some 2007 Coachella sampler)
In The Attic (from the band's 2001 demos)

The Lost Art of Facial Hair

I'm a guy who likes to switch up his look. One of the easiest and best ways to do this is by messing around with different varieties of facial hair growth. I'm big on experimentation: standard beard, fuzzy lambchops, pencil-thin mustache, goatee, soul-patch, lenghty beard, neck beard, sideburns, standard 'stache, soup-strainer stache - the more I see and the thicker my hair gets, the more I try. Ever since I grew my first sideburns and soul patch when I was eighteen (when I finally could) I haven't stopped. It's a fascination in morphing appearance that probably won't ever end. In fact, I haven't had a totally shaven face since then: the soul patch at the least always stays so there is something I can tug on when I'm thinking (or, perhaps more appropriately, want to look like I'm deep in thought).

My whole fascination must be some hybrid of my love of the Old West since I was a child and idolization of all things classic rock in my early teens.

However, I live in a time and place that is pretty tough on creative facial hair. Sure, rock stars, liberal-art teaching academics, construction workers and (shudder) hippies get away with it well enough, but everywhere else in society seems to frown upon it. There's some unwritten code that dictates: grow facial hair, don't succeed (including all you professors out there - "liberal arts" - scoff!). Is it some indication of prediliction to immoral acts or teacherous motives that I am unaware of?

I have yearned for a return to the days of 150 years ago, when men's facial hair in America was finally expressing its collective freedom. The mid-to-late nineteenth century truly was the golden age of creative facial hair. Hell, sideburns got their name from General Ambrose E. Burnside's (see picture to the right) famously uninhibeted ear flappers. They're like the rings of Saturn.

I long for the day when your average, white-collar professional (admittedly, something I've never yearned to be) has six inches of mustache twisted and formed into a terrifically fanciful twirl, when the President of the United States has chops patterened after an-upside down Floridean shape (perhaps to win votes?), and the leaders of my church return to the glory of their long-bearded ancestors. I think there is some freedom, some part of ourselves as masters of our own destiny that we lose when we allow such a prominent sign of our masculinity, of our gender, to be cut away with the shear of a scissor or blade of a Bic.

I predicted years ago that we'd see a beard trend on the horizon, and though it hasn't taken over society like some widespread system of strangly roots, it has made progress. I applaud you men out there who are fighting the good fight. Keep up the good work. Now let's get a start on bringing back the 'stache - no longer will it only be the domain of sexual predators and highway patrolmen.

Men, it's time to stand up. It's time to throw down the pre-pubescent, look of clean shaven lollygaggers and grow some David Crosby mustaches, Lincoln chin beards and burly mountain man unruliness!

And now, some songs by those who have inspired me not only by their music, but also by their gnarly choices in facial hair.

Download the entire playlist here

The Beatles - I've Got A Feeling
Band of Horses - Weed Party
Bob Dylan - Po' Boy
Outkast - Love Hater
Built To Spill - Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss
Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Cold & Wet
Charles Mingus - Better Get Hit in Yo' Soul
Grandaddy - Now It's On
Tom Waits - Straight to the Top (Vegas Version)
The Grateful Dead - Cumberland Blues
The Band - Ophelia
The Killers - This River is Wild

My Morning Jacket - Dancefloors
Iron & Wine - The Spectre of Jasper County

Talkin' Politics, Red Sox and Sigur Rós

Anyone who has ever talked politics with me for more than five minutes has probably realized a couple of things. First, I'm a political junkie - the theatre of politics is unceasingly interesting to me, definitely to a geek level. Second, my own politics fall well beyond any of the political parties in mainstream America (sorry, the two parties) and I hold about equal contempt for both, it just depends on the day and who is in power. When I say I have libertarian-socialist-via-capitalism leanings, I'm not kidding, it's just hard to fit in a box. If only I ruled the world ...

That said, I like to follow both the liberal and conservative opinion of whatever is going on in my country. I read The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, and Salon.com to try to keep up. Yesterday, I read a fascinating profile by Matt LaBash over at the conservative Standard about Roger Stone , a political operative in the most cunning (or sleazy, depending on your political affiliation) of sorts. The man worked behind the scenes in virtually every election from Nixon-Humphrey to Bush-Gore (LaBash credits him for stopping the recount in Dade County, Florida). He's the kind of political consultant that poli sci students like me drool over, idolize and worship as a god (Karl Rove is also a god, by the way). The stories told (if you can believe them all, that is -- deniability is one of the best assets to a behind the scenes consultant) are the stuff of political thriller movies. It's lengthy, but definitely worth a look.

The fact that I worship men like Roger Stone and view politics as he does (basically as performance art, only you screw as many people as necessary with whatever tactics to win) is why I've scared myself away from seriously considering politics as a career. But I'd be one helluva man to have on your campaign - just don't ask questions.

Today, over at The New Republic is an article about Utah's favorite presidential candidate Mitt (The Biggest Massachussets Flip-Flopper Since John Kerry) Romney and why the Mormon issue is an issue for him unlike it was for John Kennedy in 1960. It's short, concise, insightful analysis. I'm not a big Mitt fan, he's got a track record as a good leader, but after changing many social stances about the same time he decided to run for president, he's lost my trust. Either he's telling social conservative primary voters what they want to hear, or he truly had some sort of epiphanous moment of realization that has affected his views concerning women's rights, homosexual rights and health care (including advancements that stem-cell research could bring). Both reasons for his morph rub me wrong.

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Now on to the congratulations: Thanks to the Boston Red Sox for providing a great season for their fans and winning the World Series for the second time in four years. Curse? What 86 year-old curse? This year baseball actually had the best team throughout the season win the title, which seems to be rare since the wild-card was thrown in. The Colorado Rockies just couldn't catch a break in the 4 games, while Boston's bats where stinging balls down the lines for double after double, the Sox starting pitchers all had excellent outings and perhaps the strangest guy in baseball, (and baseball is full of weirdos and freaks, more than any other American sport, I think) Jonathan Papelbon, was unstoppable when he came in to close the games.
Ever since I was eight years old and watched the official videotape of the 1988 World Series L.A. Dodgers season, I've wanted to participate in a locker-room champagne free for all. Maybe I can scam my way into a general manager job somewhere ...
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And now onto the best stuff. The music, of course. Sigur Rós is on my mind today, I'm not sure why, I think I just needed some beauty to accompiny contemplation earlier on. For those who haven't heard the band, they are a foursome from Iceland, guitarist/vocalist Jónsi Birgisson sings in a made-up language, and they produce some of the most unique, graceful, gorgeous, enlivening music to ever pleasure your ears. If someone were to ask me what one concert they should see, if they only got one in their life, I would not choose Radiohead or Bob Dylan or Wilco or any of my other faves I've had the chance to see live. I would direct them to Sigur Rós.

I bought the band's American debut, ágætis byrjun in the winter of 2000/2001. I was living in St. George, Utah for school at the time. That winter, I remember driving the 300 miles north to my home one weekend during a white-out blizzard that stretched from about Cedar City to Scipio in my 1974 Mercedes, travelling into nothing but pure white as the music floated my car through the storm. It was one of the most beautiful music-to-driving moments I've ever had.

When I saw them in the summer of 2006, I had, no shit, a couple of minutes that are among the most spiritual, trascendent of space and time as I've ever had in my life. (And just for you naysayers out there wondering about chemically psychedelic influence, I was completely sober.) It was during "Hoppipolla", I closed my eyes, and I just was. A pure moment of being. I was not physical, I was spiritual, I was energy. It was absolutely amazing. They've got a really cool looking DVD coming out soon of interviews and performences in some unique places in Iceland, so keep on the lookout.

And for life's sake, if you ever get the chance, see the band live. Best 30 bucks I've ever spent on a concert and definitely worth planning a trip around to see.

Download entire Sigur Rós playlist

Hoppipolla (from Takk)
Untitled #4 [from ()]
Svefn-G-Englar (from Agætis Byrjun)
Staralfur [acoustic live]
Nýja Lagið [Live] (from Svefn-G-Englar EP)
Syndir Guðs [Live] (from Svefn-G-Englar EP)
Vaka (Untitled #1) [Live]

Elliott Smith

I missed the anniversary, but October 21st was four years to the day that Elliott Smith took his life. Funny, I can still remember I was driving up 1000 North in Centerville, on my way to a waterfall hike, when I flipped on NPR and heard Robert Siegal talking about Smith in the past tense. It took me a second to double take and think, "He doesn't have an album coming out", and then I realized, and seconds later the radio confirmed that Smith was found dead inside is apartment in Los Angeles.

This was a sad afternoon. I didn't cry or become hysterical, but rather hiked and reflected the way that his music, his lyrics had played part in my life. I am one who prefers downer music when he is down, it is like forcing empathy in your head. When I had my first (and so far hardest) heartbreak, it was Elliott Smith who predominated my playlist. But he went beyond that. He has also found his way onto my record player and iPod when I'm in the mood for something unearthly tuneful and melodic. When Jeff Tweedy sings about being "Saved by rock and roll" it makes me think of Elliott Smith and his music at moments in my life.

I was lucky enough to see him at the University of Utah's Redfest about a month before his death. Turns out that was his last show. My highlight: his cover of "Long, Long, Long" by the Beatles.

Elliott Smith is missed, but not forgotten. If you missed this year's New Moon, check it out. The 24 tracks sparsely re-worked by one of Smith's studio cohorts is not only fantastic, but represents what I consider the best period of his career (1994-97).

Here's some songs by the master of songwriting and pop music:

Download entire Elliott Smith playlist here

Thirteen (from New Moon)
In the Lost and Found (Honky Bach) (from Figure 8)
Say Yes (from Either/Or)
Let's Get Lost (from From A Basement on the Hill)
King's Crossing (from From A Basement on the Hill)
No Name #3 (from Roman Candle)
Waltz #2 (XO) (from XO)
Angeles (from Either/Or)
The Biggest Lie (from Elliott Smith)