Monday Mix: If It's Too Loud... Halloween 2023 Playlist

If you've been here for a while, you know that I'm all about Halloween and tend to overdo it with our annual Halloween playlist. 2023 is no exception. I've been assembling it since right after the 2022 playlist came out, and this is another beast of a playlist coming in at over five and a half hours! You get songs from long time favorites (The Prefab Messiahs, Florence + The Machine, Anthrax, Lou Reed, etc.), new favorites (Puppy Angst, Miranda and the Beat, Fever Ray, Buck Meek, Twin Temple, etc.), local favorites (Wyn Doran, Eldridge Rodriguez, The Jacklights, The Freqs, etc), and many, many more! Plus, we're putting it out a full eight days before Halloween, so you have plenty of time to enjoy it and it will be available for any weekend festivities! Let us know what you think, and feel free to suggest songs for 2024!

Monday Mix: The Music League Best of 2022

Ken and I are obsessed with Music League, which is basically the turntable.fm replacement I was waiting for. If you follow us on social media (cheap plug: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram), you had an opportunity to join us and celebrate 2022's music, and maybe discover some new tunes while you were at it.

So for Monday Mix, enjoy the top three songs from our 2022 prompts. Best heard on shuffle. Want to join the next If It's Too Loud competition? Follow us on the socials.

Monday Mix: The If It's Too Loud... Halloween 2022 Playlist

If you've been here for a while you know that Halloween is my favorite holiday. The costumes, the candy, the scary movies, being able to walk around a cemetery without people thinking you're a weirdo, etc. Our 2022 Halloween playlist is ninety-seven songs and five and a half hours long! I started putting it together way back on October 26 of last year, and it features a wide range of artists and genres like classic punk, gothic country, indie rock, folk, hip hop, noise rock, country, grunge, New Wave, etc. I decided to put it out a week early to make sure it was available for all of your spooky happenings this week. Enjoy!

Monday Mix: An Introduction to Meat Loaf

I am a big Meat Loaf fan.

Bat Out of Hell II, alongside Ace of Base's The Sign, was the first album I bought at the Greendale Mall Lechmere with my own money back in 1994. "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through" was one of the first music videos I ever remember seeing on VH1.

As a nerdy theater kid, Meat Loaf's (and, to a further extent, Jim Steinman's) flair for the bombastic and dramatic definitely appealed to 13-year-old me, and the fact that it was loud and often-profane rock music in an era where I was finding Weezer to be a little too heavy for my tastes made it feel like a little rebellion with every listen.

Meat Loaf probably hasn't aged well, musically speaking. Yeah, there's Rocky Horror, but Bat Out of Hell, a debut solo album that went neck-and-neck with Thriller in lifetime sales for a while, sounds very old in particular (and "Paradise By the Dashboard Light" especially couldn't get made today). The albums between Bats are largely forgettable and often contractual obligations. When Jim Steinman wasn't involved, a little bit of the magic was lost. When Jim Steinman was involved, the magic was there in songs that were 6-to-12 minutes long but never felt like it. He somehow made a Chuck D feature seem cringeworthy. He's dead today almost certainly because he, an overweight 70-something, wouldn't get vaccinated against COVID-19.

And yet.

Meat Loaf transcends the idea of "cool." Bat Out of Hell II, a breakthrough comeback effort, did not win me any friends in eighth grade (except for Brian, who memorized the "Wasted Youth" monologue and would snarl it on the playground at recess), but I didn't care. Goodness knows I listened to plenty of embarassing stuff in my years, but I never felt embarassed about my love of Meat Loaf. How could I? It seemed self-aware that it was ridiculous and over-the-top, and, after all, the albums had dragons and demons and flaming motocycles on the covers. They knew exactly what they were doing, and while it poked fun at metal excess, it also revered it in its own operatic way.

Meat Loaf and Steinman had a falling out of sorts in the mid-to-late 1980s, patched it up for Bat Out of Hell II and a handful of songs on Welcome to the Neighborhood before falling apart again and reuniting for Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose, which was a solid coda to their professional relationship. The last few albums were largely forgettable, which was unfortunate, but man, when Meat Loaf was good? There wasn't a lot that was better, and nearly every significant moment that will forever be etched in my brain is when he worked with Jim Steinman, and now they're both gone.

The disputes with labels and Steinman means that about a decade of work is missing from streaming services, including Meat Loaf's version of "It's All Coming Back to Me Now," (which was a megahit for Celine Dion a decade earlier) and his last truly solid song, "Couldn't Have Said It Better." It makes any sort of effort at a retrospective incomplete, but consider this a bit of a start - if you want to explore further, anything with Bat Out of Hell or Neighborhood in the title are worth your time, but this should also be a reason to explore Jim Steinman in a more substantive way (I'd start with [his version of "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through"] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KSYGQjWtSI)). Either way, RIP Meat Loaf, and thanks for the music. And get vaccinated, please.

Monday Mix: An Introduction to Nick Cave

I wasn't a Nick Cave fan three months ago, but I am now.

Nick Cave is an Australian rock musician who is probably more than just a cult hero but definitely not a mainstream act, either. His baritone is unlike most male singers, his songs routinely pass the five minute mark, and the lyrics are filled with some of the most vivid and compelling narratives I've heard in a long, long time. I don't know why it didn't click the first few times I tried to listen, but it did now.

So for Monday Mix this week, have some Nick Cave. The bulk of the mix is based around his work with his band, The Bad Seeds, but also includes some offerings from the Grinderman side project and The Birthday Party (the post-punk, ahead-of-its-time band that preceded the Bad Seeds). Trimming a playlist down to the best 30 songs of all eras was a challenge, which means there's none of his soundtrack work with Warren Ellis and none of The Boys Next Door, but if you're anything like me, you'll listen to this mix and proceed down quite the rabbit hole.

Some fair warning: it might take a minute. Nick Cave's approach is singular, and for every song like "The Ship Song," there are efforts like "Saint Huck" that might be a little less penetrable. But there's a chamber-esque aspect to a lot of Cave's work, and a Tom Waitsian style to its overall presentation, and that's definitely worth something.

So enjoy what might be your new favorite obsession if you weren't already on board. And if you were already a friend, thanks for letting me become a latecomer to the (Birthday) party.

Monday Mix: The Best of Christmas

Forget your traditional stuff, we like our Christmas music to be modern, dumb, or dumb and modern, so here's a ton of Christmas music to put on shuffle and enjoy with/annoy the family. Subscribe and check back, since we'll probably be adding to it over the course of the season.

Monday Mix: If It's Too Loud... Halloween 2021 Playlist

For the 2021 If It's Too Loud... Halloween playlist, I did what I've been doing the past few years: As soon as the 2020 playlist was posted, I created a new one and started adding to it. Every time I stumbled onto a song deemed appropriate, I added it. After a year, the playlist ballooned to eighty nine songs and five and a half hours! There's a ton of new stuff released in the past year (The Exbats, Viagra Boys, Nervous Dater, Hard Nips, The Jacklights) there are also plenty of classics (Sonic Youth, L7, Neil Young, The Cramps, Pulp) in here. It covers a wide variety of musical genres, and it's long enough to cover any of your Halloween plans! Plus, since Halloween isn't until Sunday, we get a whole week to listen. Enjoy!

Monday Mix: If It's Too Loud... Halloween 2020 Playlist!

If you've been reading If It's Too Loud... for a while, you know that Halloween is my favorite holiday, and that I tend to go overboard with the Halloween playlist every year. Since this is pretty much all we have for Halloween this year, it's a monster (o pun intended) seventy one song, nearly four hour playlist! I've been making it since literally last November, adding songs as I stumbled across them. There are songs from longtime blog favorites (Speedy Ortiz, Wussy, Melvins, The Gravel Pit, Against Me!), newly discovered favorites (Heather Valley, Comet Pond, Tysk Tysk Task, Gino & The Goons), some classics (Bruce Springsteen, Jello Biafra, Dusty Springfield, Alice Cooper, Siouxsie and the Banshees), and more! Whatever you're doing Saturday night (or this entire week) to celebrate, you're gonna to find some spookiness to love here!

Monday Mix: Jeff's Y-Not Quarantine Radio Takeover

If you missed Jeff's Quarantine DJ session on Friday, it's now on demand! Enjoy this hour long mix of new and recent indie music.

Monday Mix: A (Re)Introduction to Kathleen Edwards

With Kathleen Edwards releasing her first album of new music in nearly eight years later this summer, I felt like now was as good a time as any to take a look back at some of her best work so far, so a new Monday Mix for your American Memorial Day is cookout appropriate even if you're socially distancing, and the irony that it highlights a Canadian artist on a national holiday is not lost on me.

Edwards has released four albums up to now, and this mix covers all four plus her new release, "Options Open." The mix is best listened to in order, at least the first time around...

Failer: Edwards's debut album is represented by five songs here. "Six O'Clock News" put her on the map, "One More Song the Radio Won't Like" kept her there, and the rest show some decent range. Don't sleep on "12 Bellevue," which remains a favorite of mine. After listening to this set, make sure to check out this highlight from her debut (and long-lost) EP, Building 55, which has some elements of both "Lone Wolf" and "Bellevue" while giving an early sense of her range.

Back to Me: The follow-up to Failer does not expand things out too too much with one exception in the title track, which is much more of a rock experience than the alt-country we came to expect. Even still, it's a heck of a song. "In State" is the spiritual, if not literal, sequel to "Six O'Clock News," and "Copied Keys" far too often makes things a little too dusty if you catch my drift...

Asking for Flowers: That this album wasn't a serious breakthrough record for her, I have no idea. The title track is gorgeous, lead single "The Cheapest Key" is a lot of fun, but the highlight in a near-perfect album is "I Make the Dough, You Get the Glory," which has so many great lines (I'm always back and forth between "You're the Great One/I'm Marty McSorley" and "Heavy rotation on the CBC/Whatever in hell that really means") and maybe the best, most Canadian music video you can imagine.

Voyageur: This album was the mainstream play, was famously produced in part by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, was less country and more indie/adult-alternative, and... it has a lot of great moments. As a huge fan, I gave this a lot of time and listens, but a lot of the charm and the wit that made Kathleen Edwards different than every twangy gal with a guitar was a little lost here. And a lot of the baggage that came with this album is why she quit music to begin with, so it's hard not to look back at this album and find a lot of offramps along the way. Still, "Change the Sheets" was a great song, "Empty Threat" probably the most Kathleen Edwards song on the record ("I'm moving to America/It's not an empty threat"), and "Mint," although unlike much else that she has offered up, is an underrated classic from her catalog.

The mix closes with her new song, "Options Open," and it deserves to be among this canon of songs after a week of repeated listens. I'm more excited than ever for the new album, Total Freedom, and hopefully this gets you in the mood for it as well.

If It's Too Loud Monday Mix: Bill Rieflin's R.E.M. Years

Percussionist Bill Rieflin passed way last week after a battle with cancer. He is perhaps best known for his work with Ministry, but he was also a session/touring musician with a number of bands in the later part of his career, perhaps most notably with R.E.M..

R.E.M. is my favorite band, and Rieflin was the drummer for their final studio albums along with the late tours. I have a pet theory that Bill Berry, the band's original drummer, was the true glue that held all the pieces of R.E.M. together, and when he left after New Adventures in Hi-Fi the band's catalogue became less focused and cohesive as a result. We'll never know for certain how much of an impact Rieflin had on R.E.M.'s sound in those later years, but I can't help but think that a drummer of his caliber and style brought some energy to a band that, in retrospect, may have needed it.

So, for Monday Mix this week, the best of the Bill Rieflin R.E.M. years. My favorite tracks from their last two studio albums, and highlights from the two live albums the band put out that featured Rieflin in the role.

Monday Mix: The If It's Too Loud... 2019 Halloween Playlist

Same as last year, I got more than a little ridiculous with this year's If It's Too Loud... Halloween playlist. Starting on November 9, 2018, I began adding songs as I came across them, ending up with a 55 song, over three hour playlist. It features some of our classic alternative favorites (Jon Spencer, Holly Golightly, Meat Puppets, Mudhoney), songs more metal than our usual (Ministry, Orange Goblin), hip hop (STL GLD, L'Orange and Jeremiah Jae), folk and folk adjacent (Mary Lou Lord, Jittery Jack, Charming Disaster, Jason Hawk Harris), local favorites (Carissa Johnson, Diablogato, Hallelujah the Hills), new discoveries/favorites (The Exbats, The Tenth, Starcrawler), the loud (Screaming Females, Lightning Bolt, Scissorfight), and, of course, much, much more! It's perfect for all of your Halloween party and handing out candy needs!

Monday Mix: Jeff's Favorite Songs of 2018

Me: "Jeff, you gotta do the mix for Monday before Christmas.

Also me: "On it."

Also also me: "Hey, I liked a lot of songs this year. Gonna be hard to narrow it down to 30."

Also also also me: "Screw it, do 40."

Also also also also me: "Dude, you added 67 to the playlist."

Also also also also also me: "Fine, I'll try to cut it to 50."

Also also also also also also me: "There's no way I'm cutting 'The Hamilton Polka' from this."

So yeah. Here's 51 songs for the year. Shuffle and enjoy!

Monday Mix (on a Friday): Halloween 2018

I love Halloween, but even I think I may have gone a bit too far on this year's If It's Too Loud... Halloween playlist. Starting on November 1, 2017, I started a playlist and tossed just about any song I thought would be good for a Halloween playlist on it. What we end up with is a forty five song, nearly three hour playlist. Just about every style of music we cover is included on this. You get indie rock legends (Luna, Buffalo Tom, Lee Ranaldo), heavier artists (The Jesus Lizard, Clutch, Faith No More), Americana/roots (Sarah Shook & The Disarmers, Lucero, Murder By Death), current indie rockers (Caroline Rose, Melkbelly, A Place to Bury Strangers), some hip hop (Mr. Lif, Cypress Hill), and a whole lot more. It's perfect for this weekend's Halloween parties (which is why we aren't waiting until Monday) and to listen to while you hand out candy on Wednesday. Enjoy!

Monday Mix (and more!): The Roadhouse Is Proud to Welcome... Music and Twin Peaks!

The finale of Twin Peaks: The Return was two weeks ago and my brain is still busted wide open from the entire series. No television show has exercised my brain the way The Return did, and the mysteries that were solved during the season being replaced by new ones has just kept me so engaged in the entire mythology of the Peaks universe up to this point that I see no signs of stopping. I am looking for books that are like Twin Peaks, shows that will somehow fill the orb-shaped void inside of me.

While the music of the original series is iconic in its own right, The Return stepped up in an interesting and unexpected way. While the series itself played around considerably both with ethereal whooshing soundscapes and the use of silence, most episodes ended with a scene in the bar, where the music venue, "The Roadhouse," was hosting all sorts of indie artists. It was almost a game in and of itself to see who would be featured along the way.

Also related were some of the interesting musical discoveries that have come about from my immersion into the whole Twin Peaks thing. So our mix is 20 or so songs from the series, and some extras:


* The playlist. Included in this playlist are some highlights from the show and from semi-related acts...
** Julee Cruise - "Falling": The original theme song, just as strange and haunting today as it was when it was first used.
** (The) Nine Inch Nails - "She's Gone Away": Trent Reznor has noted that he wrote this song specifically for The Return
** Lissie - "Wild Wild West": One of a few "Roadhouse versions" released following the end of the show.
** "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima": One of the most striking moments of The Return was during the infamous episode 8, and was soundtracked by this modern classical masterpiece.
** Flesh World - "To Lose Me": A band we've highlighted here before, named after the adult publication from the original series.
** James Hurley - "Just You": Proved what many knew for 25 years - James was always cool.
** Sky Ferriera - "Night Time, My Time": Where I hope she cured that rash...

* I also recommend checking out the following:
** Chrysta Bell - We Dissolve: Bell played FBI Agent Tammy Preston on the show, and she's primarily a musician that David Lynch considers a muse. Her album is haunting and weird and wonderful - a lot like Twin Peaks is.
** Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource Vol. 1: The joke among Twin Peaks fans was the amount of "ethereal whooshing" throughout The Return, and the musician/sound designer who was responsible for much of it has released an ambient score from The Return that is worth your time if you're into it.
** Xiu Xiu - Plays the Music of Twin Peaks: The indie act here released this in 2015, but it's a fun little diversion that's also surprisingly true to the original music.

Monday Mix: Recent Female-Fronted Rock

If you've noticed from my reviews as of late, I've become somewhat obsessed with a certain revival of 90s-era Juliana Hatfield/Veruca Salt-sounding acts. There's a lot of great stuff out there, and I was going to make a playlist for myself before I realized that I could just share it with you guys. So here's a fun mix for your Monday - don't consider this representative, but just a fun start.

Monday Mix: If It's Too Loud... 2017 Valentine's Day Playlist

Valentine's Day sucks. We spend weeks getting faux romance crammed down our throats and then we're stuck spending a ridiculous amount of money to prove we're in love on a day that means nothing to anyone. Plus, most romantic music is outrageously terrible. You know what's better than romantic music? Break up music. Which is what the 2017 If It's Too Loud... Valentine's Day playlist consists of. I might have leaned a bit too heavily on old timey country, but is there anything better for the negative sides of love than classic country? Aside from that, there's a ton of 90s alternative, which my knowledge of sad sack 90s alternative shows what my romantic life was like back in that decade. [Note: There might be two Lemonheads songs, but one is an 80s Ben Deily song and the other is a 2000s Evan Dando one, so it's completely different.] This is perfect for anyone that doesn't give a crap about the most forcibly romantic holiday of the year or that enjoys mopey music. Enjoy!

Monday Mix: 365(ish) Days of Songs on Facebook

On Facebook in 2016, I worked on trying to post a song a day. I missed a few along the way, and many weren't on Spotify, but the result is a kind of insane mix that seems worth sharing post-holidays/New Year. As things will be ramping up again soon enough, this seems like a good way to whet your musical appetite.

Monday Mix: Jeff's Favorite Songs of 2016

To kind of close the book on the year a bit, I wanted to offer up a quickie playlist of my favorite songs this year. Shuffle or not, here's how I might rank them:

1) Royksopp and Susanne Sundfor - "Never Ever" (a song that should have been 2016's "Get Lucky," a much better throwback than Daft Punk did. Song of the year for me, no question)
2) Big Thief - "Masterpiece" (tell me this song isn't the most epic sparse indie rock song you've ever heard)
3) Eric Bachmann - "Mercy" (the Nerf Herder singer/songwriter offered up one of the most emotional songs of the year for me)
4) Margaret Glaspy - "Emotions and Math" (great song, of course, but I still maintain this is actually from the point of view of a dog)
5) The Prettiots - "Suicide Hotline" (this is not a cry for help)
6) Quilt - "Roller" (local song of the year, but also a great groove and catchy chorus)
7) Lauren Mann - "New Beginning" (I feel as if Lauren Mann would have gotten more attention had more people heard this song)
8) The Avett Brothers - "Smithsonian" (arguably one of the best songs they've ever done period)
9) Tancred - "Pens" (has my favorite lyric of the year: "I'm insanely healthy in my head/it's crazy how stable I am")
10) The Casket Girls - "Tears of a Clown" (I think a lot of people might get something extra out of this modern protest song)
11) DJ Shadow and Run the Jewels - "Nobody Speak" (RTJ hasn't ever clicked with me until this song, and now I can't get enough)
12) Ladyhawke - "A Love Song" (...because I could only choose one...)
13) Paper Pilots - "The Weather" (this is not a song you've likely heard, but I promise it won't leave your head once you do)
14) Radiation City - "Oil Show" (fun, glitchy indie pop)
15) Powerslut - "Switch Hitter" (sexually-tinged and funny as well)
16) Weakened Friends - "95" (this was my song of the summer)
17) Thao & the Get Down Stay Down - "Nobody Dies" (was honestly hard to choose between this and "Meticulous Bird")
18) Rococode - "Panic Attack" (another song with one of the catchiest choruses of the year)
19) Ruby the Rabbitfoot - "Nicola La" (while I nearly chose "Wild Cherry Chapstick," this song has a heck of a chorus as well)
20) CFO$ - "Glorious Domination" (before you roll your eyes at a WWE entrance theme, listen to this and tell me you won't be humming this/yelling along in your car later)

Monday Mix: If It's Too Loud... 2016 Holiday Playlist

I prefer Halloween over Christmas. Christmas music is pretty much unavoidable, and most of it is pretty awful. It's either the same songs over and over every year or just top 40 pop crap you'll hopefully forget next year. That's why we bring you the If It's Too Loud... 2016 Holiday playlist. This is the second we've done (for some reason we skipped last year), and we've tried hard to not repeat from the last one. We tried to include a wide mix of everything we cover from classic country (Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn), 90s favorites (Jennifer Trynin, Letters to Cleo), classic punk (The Ramones, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Bad Religion), classic rockers (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Chuck Berry), soul (James Brown, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings), current favorites (Courtney Barnett, Matt Pond PA, Sallie Ford), and, of course, "Christmas in Hollis" from Run DMC. No Christmas playlist is complete without it.