“With the first gray light he rose and left the boy sleeping and walked out to the road and squatted and studied the country to the south. Barren, silent, godless. He thought the month was October but he wasnt sure. He hadnt kept a calendar for years. They were moving south. There’d be no surviving another winter here.”
–from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
photo by douglas roesch
I’ve been obsessed with Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 post-apocalyptic masterpiece The Road as of late, and it occured to me that it might be fun to develop a sort of companion mix as I embark on my third go-around with the novel in as many weeks. This isn’t necessarily intended as a reading soundtrack, just a playlist of songs that reflect the book’s coldly enveloping mood of desolation and despair, as well as some of its more overt, obvious themes (without digging too much into the underlying motifs of McCarthy’s work). Anyway, here’s my amateurish, hastily thrown-together attempt, partially inspired by Moka’s stellar playlists, in which she consistently displays an uncanny knack for capturing intensely specific moods, and this guy’s photoset, which could almost serve as The Road’s visual storyboard. I realize there are some painfully obvious choices on this list (see track #1), but I enjoyed making it. I also included some loosely relevant lyrical excerpts from the songs. If you’ve read the novel, feel free to offer additional choices. If you haven’t read the novel, you should.
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songs for the road:
1. Radiohead – “Four Minute Warning” (2007)
I don’t want to hear it
I don’t want to know
I just want to run and hide
This is just a nightmare
Soon I’m gonna wake up
Someone’s gonna bring me around
2. Sigur Ros – Untitled #2 (2003)
3. Burial – “Dog Shelter” (2007)
4. The Knife – “Still Light” (2006)
I was afraid, I guess
Now I can think no more
I was so concentrated
On keeping things together
I’ve learned to focus on
I didn’t want to disappoint
Now where is everybody
Is it still light outside?
5. Stina Nordenstam – Parliament Square (the Knife remix) (2004)
This is no final solution
No, this is just for today
I’m running from London pollution
Still cold from the rain
6. sunnO))) & Boris – The Sinking Belle (2006)
7. Animal Collective – “Safer” (2007)
I turn, ask is it really that bad
They say we’ve much bigger problems, we got wolves on the plain
And they left their den ’cause of cracks in the pipes through the murky graves
They’re running just as fast as the hares
They say you shouldn’t leave a place if you can eat there
Oh, man, and things have changed
In the snow filled lakes where there used to be waves
8. Marika Papagika – Smyrneiko Minore (circa early/mid-1920s)
9. Clarence Ashley – Dark Holler (1929)
When I’m asleep I’m dreaming about you
When I wake I have no rest
Every moment seems like an hour
All the pains roll through my breast
10. J. Tillman – Waking Days (2006)
In the back of my mind,
I know nothing will change
Wish that kept me from going
but I go on the same
11. Grizzly Bear – “Colorado” (2006)
When I clung to you
there was nothing to hold on tight with,
you left me adrift
What now?
12. múm – Winter (What We Never Were After All) (2007)
i absolutely love this book too, and i think a lot of your mp3 choices are dead on, especially colorado and sigur ros.
there’s a song called lost star by timothy dick, and the first time i heard it i wrote a post about how much it reminded me of the road, which i had just finished at the time.
great post chris.
Beautiful post Chris.
What a coincidence, I just finished The Road today. Thank you for your excellent and timely post.
-JRDN
I finished it about a month ago and read most of it to Phosphorescent’s Endless parts I and II. Very nice choices.
awesome mix man
great post, this book is in my stack of “books to read over the holidays”.
Hi, Interesting post, did the ‘No Country’ movie get you on a fix of McCarthy too? I’ve been reading the shit out of everything I can find by McCarthy, that guy knows how to write a fucking sentence. I was having a hard time hearing music for The Road except wind, static and the kid’s flute he carves for him. Might be an opportunity for some minimalist composer. You read Blood Meridian? That book is beyond the threshold of all words. You should post the soundtrack to that thing. It makes the Road seem too clean and tidy. Oyeah not to overstay welcome, but supposedly the movie for The Road is in production, with either Viggo Mortenson or Guy Pierce as the father. Also in preproduction is Blood Meridian by ridley scott? that seems dicey.
myspace.com/astronautgraveyard
totally going to be a spaz here, but this post brought tears to my eyes. beautiful. thank you chris.
Whenever I read Cormac McCarthy, all I can ever listen to or think of is Songs: Ohia. Some Ghost Tropic, Didnt it Rain; everything actually.
That’s a fantastic post, it’s my favourite book of the last few years, some of the most beautiful, sparse writing ever committed to paper. If anyone’s interested, I wrote a song when I was reading that book, doesn’t compare to anything on this list but I think it’s ok. It’s called ‘Lastwood’ and is downloadable free on http://www.myspace.com/theholyromanarmy
this is so awesome! do more of these!!!
can you ever do a fileshare of all the songs together?
woudl be so cool
after this post, i’m definitely picking up the book.
what a great post. havent read the road yet, but alls ive been reading is mccarthy, the man is a genius. ive read all the pretty horses, blood meridian, and no country, in that order. cant say a bad thing about any of em. bloody meridian is the darkest, bloodiest, most evil book ever but definitly has that “light at the end”. definitly pick up blood meridian next.
The Road was my favorite book last year. Can’t wait to get home and see what music you picked for it. Thank you for all the great new music this year.
Thank yo so much, Chris. I feel humbled. The Road is such a morbid book, at the time that I bought it I wasn’t feeling really happy with myself so I found it a tad opressive but Cormac’s writing is so beautiful that I just couldn’t keep the book down. Your playlist does a great job capturing this desolate but stunning landscapes of the book. Hope you keep doing more of these.
Btw, have you seen “no country for old men” already? I’m very curious to see how the Coen Bros. translate his words into the screen.
yes i love this post, this is exactly what i was looking for this winter. i absolutely love the sinking belle song! and all the rest too of course :-)
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4 minute warning comes through again!
Earth’s album “Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method” is a McCarthy score of sorts, with some of the song titles taken from chapter titles in that book.
This is too funny. I also am currently reading The Road. Only 75 pages left.
when I was reading the Road I had to restrain myself and not listen to Godspeed You! Black Emperor because I thought it would be too obvious a soundtrack.
this book is amazing, i am reading blood meridian right now which is incredible and also read no country for old men this year, which was also great, the movie is great too. check out northern state (yes that northern state) Fall Apart – it’s the last song on their album and sounds like it could have been written about that book, musically and lyrically. features kaki king too
I listened to “4 Minute Warning” (among other Radiohead songs) yesterday as I drove across my hometown, now eerily post-apocalyptic with no electricity and ice-covered tree limbs littering the roadways. It was so very fitting. Now I want to read The Road.
I agree with Josh, Godspeed You! Black Emperor seems almost too fitting for this soundtrack, but even so I’d think The Dead Flag Blues would be a shoe-in.
J Tillman is very magnificent.
I’m actually dead in the middle of this book.
I am not a huge reader any more (use to be). I admit I had never heard of Cormac McCarthy until after I saw No Country For Old Men. I loved the movie so I bought the book and read it all in one day (which I’ve never ever done). The next day I bought the Road which I am in the middle of now. Very intense stuff. Brilliant.
I agree on how befitting the apocalyptic sounds of GY!BE are for this novel. Listening to F#A#oo while I read late at night totally heightened the experience for me. Just as it did in the awesome intro to 28 Days Later… I don’t what it is, but these respective doomsday scenarios are just so damn intriguing to me.
Thanks for picking up my photos. One of these days I’ll finish the set. I’ll have to give a listen to the music you’ve picked out.
May I also suggest John Vanderslice’s
“Time to Go” off of his latest album.
I just finished the book too and was listening to PJ Harvey’s White Chalk on repeat – the two went really well together. Can someone get me a tissue?…
“Walkin’ On Sunshine” maybe? or some Steely Dan joint
the past two EARTH albums would be great; the “hex” album was completely based on blood meridian. very expansive and slow. perhaps godspeed you! black emperor would be too obvious a choice, but the track “dead flag blues” off the first album would be perfect:
it went like this:
the buildings tumbled in on themselves
mothers clutching babies picked through the rubble
and pulled out their hair
the skyline was beautiful on fire
all twisted metal stretching upwards
everything washed in a thin orange haze
i said: “kiss me, you’re beautiful -
these are truly the last days”
you grabbed my hand and we fell into it
like a daydream or a fever
we woke up one morning and fell a little further down -
for sure it’s the valley of death
maybe something by hrsta would be great too.
^^ nice blog!! ^@^
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I love icelandic bands, so i'm very surprised that Winter (that we never were after all) and Untitled 2 were in the post. Thank you (I like Radiohead too)