Tuck the Darkness In
(A mixtape and a story about mixtapes)
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about road trips. I can’t describe with true accuracy how important they were to my youth, how those hours spent behind the wheel on some stretch of highway shaped me. I used to look forward to them weeks in advance, and the thing I looked forward to most was the music.
I’d work for hours putting together different mix tapes (and later CDs), some for day driving, some for night. The night tapes tended to fall into two categories: those you needed to listen to stay awake, and those you listened to when you wanted to just listen. When you wanted the whole of your world to collapse to the span of your headlights and a conversation, sometimes with your passenger, sometimes with yourself. Those moments were the closest we ever got to being honest with ourselves.
(I don’t know if this still a thing. I fear that it isn’t; that the advent of the smartphone has allowed us to escape the binary of a car into the wider world. But this isn’t meant to be a lamentation of our new culture, rather a remembrance of a thing lost.)
This mixtape, then, is one of those latter night ones. It’s for a road trip never taken, or maybe it’s happening, now. So picture this: you’re behind the wheel, the sun set hours behind you, headed east through unfamiliar country, an unknown road. The radio has gone to static, so you put this in the deck. Your passenger is curled up on the seat beside you, eyes closed, the green lights of the dash on their face. The only thing ahead of you is a beam of headlight, and then dark and a world and a future not yet to be.
A.
1. I-94 W 832 Miles — Car Seat Headrest
2. Belong to You — Eric Bachmann
3. Down — The Figments
4. Never Let Me Down — David Bowie
5. The Gray Tower — Songs: Ohia
6. Reuben Pantier — Richard Buckner
B:
7. To Be Won — Good Morning
8. Tuck the Darkness In — Bowerbirds
9. The Ghost in You — Robyn Hitchcock
10. Maud Gone — Car Seat Headrest
11. The Only Thing — Sufjan Stevens
12. Here Comes a Regular (Outtake) — The Replacements
13. Follow — Richie Havens
