Aug 8, 2007
Sleep Cycle pt.1: Late Night Lullabies
Image credit: The Liquid-Rust Ship by Stuart Lee
A lullaby is like an antique airship that inflates itself with your deepest thoughts and most hidden dreams and softly floats you into dreamland. An airship that’s built out of soothing melodies, hush vocals and sweetly sung lyrics that slowly drifts over a landscape of unfilled promises and brooding fears. It lures the listener into a world of unrestricted imagination and infinite freedom.
the milk from your breast is on my lips
and lovelier words from your mouth to me
when salty my sweat and fingertips
~ Iron & Wine / The Sea and the Rhythm ~
Below is a short playlist – by reader’s request – for late night listening. Nine alternative lullabies for grownups to soothe your mind and bring you to sleep. We hope you enjoy your flight on the Motel de Moka lullaby airship. Next in line for this series of three posts will be subsequently a playlist for listening during the darkest hours of night and the earliest hours of day.
- Greg Oblivian – Bad Man
Sore Losers (Soundtrack) (Sympathy for the Record Industry, 1997) - The Czars – Lullaby 6000
The Ugly People Vs. the Beautiful People (Manifesto, 2001) - Loudon Wainwright III – Lullaby
Attempted Mustache (Columbia, 1973) - Pernice Brothers – Shaken Baby
The World Won’t End (Ashmont, 2001) - David Kitt – Another Love Song
Small Moments (Rough Trade, 2000) - Hisato Higuchi – Himitsu
Dialogue (Family Vineyard, 2006) - Iron & Wine – The Sea and the Rhythm
The Sea & the Rhythm (Sub Pop, 2003) - Tin Hat Trio – Lauren’s Lullaby
Book of Silk (Artemis, 2004) - Alela Diane – Oh! My Mama
The Pirate’s Gospel (Holocene, 2006)
I had like 50+ songs to choose from and in the end I still always feel like I’ve chosen all the wrong ones, haha.
:) when Doug requested lullabies I immediatly thought about the music of Colleen, Flotel, Orla Wren & the likes. I was then exchanging some emails with him and his idea of lullabies was rather oriented towards artist like Jeff Buckley which coincidentially fit much better with your own ideas about lullabies and well, these are very good! I’m gonna try them tonight. Maybe it’s just me but don’t you find the opening verses melody in “bad man” very similar to those on “you are the generation who bought more shoes” by Johnny boy?
Yeah I know what you mean, I had a couple of tracks like that in my first selection too. Would be cool if you could challenge my post someday with your own definition and selection of lullabies! I had to reinvent the meaning of lullaby for myself in order to make a choice between different styles and ended up with this. Most songs on this list are actually selected more on lyrical content than on arrangements and such. I also had quite a large selection of sweetly singing female songwriters with peaceful folk songs like Sibylle Baier and Peggy Honeywell. They would make for excellent lullabies but there were so many that I decided to just make an entire post for them. So if anyone was expecting or left wanting for more sweet and simple folk songs then just hold on for a couple more weeks. ;)
Oh, and the cute harmonies on the David Kitt track are actually from his nine-year old brother. :-)
I really love what you’ve done here.
[...] Following this series’ previous entry late night lullabies, this post continuous where we left off and heads into the darkest hours of night. I’ve tried to find the connection between this theme and the romantic and mystical undertone of the sculpture. The grace of her vulnerable sleeping body, the silent cemetery surroundings and the deep sorrow of losing a loved one. They became synonyms for the night’s serene, dreamy, and tender ambiance. [...]
[...] As I was sitting there in awe – with a small crowd of maybe eighty people hanging on every word – and watching her sing I had numerous images running through my mind. One of them was the picture as shown above which I randomly came across on Flickr many months ago. Somehow it seemed to capture the tension that I felt that afternoon between light-heartedness and nostalgia quite wonderfully. It also seemed to fit perfectly with a mix that I had already announced previously in a lullabies post. So I decided on the spot to build a mix around this picture and Mariee Sioux’s entrancing performance. [...]
mmmmmm..un especial lullabies..
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[...] (for more Arthur Russell information) As Long As I Can Hold My Breath – pt.1, pt.2 & pt.3 Sleep Cycle pt.1: Late Night Lullabies Sleep Cycle pt.2: Asleep Eternally Sleep Cycle pt.3: Awaken Return to Sea: As the Waves Will Always [...]