What's your musical horoscope?  (Put your music player on shuffle and write down the first 10 songs that come up.)  Inspired by Stephanie.

I rarely listen to my iPod on shuffle. Usually, I queue up several albums and just let them play, or create a specific playlist of songs I'd like to hear right now. The exception is when I'm driving a long distance, occasionally I like to break the monotony with the unexpected juxtapositions that a random playlist offers.

After putting my music player on shuffle, here are the first ten songs to play:

Mountain Goats: "Chinese Rifle Song" from Yam, the King of Crops

Julie Doiron: "Shivers + Crickets" from Heart and Crime

Morrissey: "Ouija Board, Ouija Board" from Bona Drag

Architecture in Helsinki: "City Calm Down" from Fingers Crossed

Jens Lekman: "Too Happy" from spelar i Kalmar 17/12

CocoRosie: "Terrible Angels" from Le Maison de Mon Reve

Josephine Foster: "The Way Is Sweetly Mown" from Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You

Johnny Cash: "What Do I Care" from The Essential Johnny Cash

Devendra Banhart: "Korean Dogwood" from Cripple Crow

Casey Dienel: "Embroidery" from Wind-Up Canary

I am a fan of singer-songwriters, who would have known?

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Fewer Moving Parts

As I finalized my half-year list of 2006 favorite books and music, I was listening to Fewer Moving Parts (which incidentally made the list), the new solo  EP from Pedro the Lion frontman David Bazan.

The EP is unique, in that Bazan offers five songs, then the stripped-down demos of the same songs (in the same order). Surprisingly, I love both the studio and demo versions. Where the studio songs excel musically, the demos bring Bazan's songwriting to the forefront.

This track, made available by Bazan, is a rough mix of the studio version, so it falls somewhere between the studio and acoustic version.

David Bazan - Backwoods Nation (Speeding the Collapse) (rough mix)

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