M3 Volume 7... Available Now

Here at last is the long-overdue, hotly-anticipated (maybe?), SEVENTH edition of the M3 mixtape series, M3 Volume 7. Now for the great many of you who just recently joined the ranks of the Good Weather For Airstrikes readership after the traffic surge that resulted from the Top 65 Music Videos of 2005 post, I'll fill in with a little background info on the M3 empire.

M3, which stands for Music Mix Monthly (or maybe it doesn't, it just had a nice ring to it) was a CD mix service I started up last year to disseminate new and good music to my peers at my high school. Its a fifteen-song mix (note: Volumes 1-3 only have ten songs) of what I deem to be the hottest jams of today and tomorrow, or just incredible songs that need to be heard, and a new edition drops once or twice a month. Sometimes more often than that, sometimes less. So far there have been six main volumes of M3, as well as a couple of specialized theme editions, and I will be posting volumes 1 through 3 on the website next month (get ready for "M3 March"), as they were created before the inception of Good Weather For Airstrikes. BUT, as for the matter presently at hand, M3 Volume 7 drops today, so without further ado, I present to you M3V7 in all its glory: [front cover design adapted from Our Thin Worn Skin]For some context, M3 Volume 7 was conceived in mid-December on a snowy train ride to New York City, where I was to visit someone I was very much in love with at the time, and it's conceivable these pleasant, wintry circumstances are reflected in the songs, but that's up to you to decide. This is a mix of wonderful, sometimes epic, often twinkly songs guaranteed to put you in a happy mood. Centered on and built around the flawless progression that occurs between "The Predatory Wasp" and "Brand New Colony", I feel like the mix embodies and reflects the pristine winter's day on which it was conceived.

The first six songs on the album come grouped in sonic pairs, but manage to flow well together to lead to the mix's second half. Up first is the "Scotland/twee" pair, featuring "White Collar Boy", from established veterans of twee Belle & Sebastian, and "The Start of Something", courtesy of much-buzzed-about up-and-comers Voxtrot. Next is a pair of beautiful songs from solo violinists Final Fantasy ("The CN Tower Is Dead") and Andrew Bird ("Fake Palindromes"), followed by the final sonic pair, the "indie-country" grouping. The "indie-country" grouping features "With Arms Outstretched", the most country-sounding song in Rilo Kiley's catalogue, which foreshadowed the soulful country stylings of Jenny Lewis' solo debut, as well as "Alright" by Sweden's The Lost Patrol. "Alright" is an instantly familiar, unbelievably catchy gem from the relatively unheard of Lost Patrol, which, considering the band's brand of blissful pop music, is ironically the side project of, Dennis Lyxzén, the former lead singer of hardcore-punk masterminds The Refused.

The second half of the album opens with Brendan Benson's relentlessly twinkly "Cold Hands (Warm Heart)" and Death Cab's beautiful "Marching Bands of Manhattan", before Sufjan Stevens steals the show with his incredible acoustic rendition of "Chicago", which was one of the best songs of 2005 and is only more pulchritudinous (I already used "beautiful" once in this sentence) when stripped down to it's acoustic core. Next Bloc Party makes their standard appearance with "So Here We Are", one of the slower, more moving tracks on Silent Alarm, which flows inexplicably well into Sigur Ros' remarkable "Hoppipolla", which embodies the pristine glaciality (not a real word!) of an icy winter more perfectly than any other song on this mix. Finally, Sufjan Stevens opens the final third of the album with "The Predatory Wasp", the most moving and epic ballad on Illinois (an album full of moving and epic ballads), which moves into Stars' "On Peak Hill", a gem from Stars debut album (Nightsongs) that's much less well-known but might actually be better than "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" (yeah, I said it). Finally, German pop-masterminds The Notwist and the equally-incredible Postal Service close out the album on a decidedly electronic note, with "Consequence", one of the more beautiful electronic ballads ever written, and a live version of "Brand New Colony", which was recorded on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic (see my full write-up of that session here, complete with un-downloadable MP3s!) and features all kind of new, though subtle, bells and whistles. I hope this is as enjoyable for everyone to listen to as it was for me to make. MP3s below, the [highly recommended] is implied:

M3 Volume 7 MP3s:
1. "White Collar Boy" - Belle & Sebastian
2. "The Start of Something" - Voxtrot
3. "The CN Tower Belongs To The Dead" - Final Fantasy
4. "Fake Palindromes" - Andrew Bird
5. "With Arms Outstretched" - Rilo Kiley
6. "Alright" - The Lost Patrol
7. "Cold Hands (Warm Heart)" - Brendan Benson
8. "Marching Bands of Manhattan" - Death Cab For Cutie
9. "Chicago" (Acoustic) - Sufjan Stevens
10. "So Here We Are" - Bloc Party
11. "Hoppipolla" - Sigur Ros
12. "The Predatory Wasp" - Sufjan Stevens
13. "On Peak Hill" - Stars
14. "Consequence" - The Notwist
15. "Brand New Colony" (Live on KCRW) - Postal Service