If it’s Christmas at You Ain’t No Picasso, that means it’s Mixmas! These twelve days give me a chance to turn You Ain’t No Picasso over to the musicians I cover and allow them to showcase some of their favorite songs through a themed mix.

MP3: Parenthetical Girls – The Weight She Fell Under

I discovered Parenthetical Girls in 2008 and slowly fell in love. They’re like a well-orchestrated Bishop Allen who aren’t afraid to get a bit weird sometimes. And even though they cause me great happiness, Zac from Parenthetical Girls is here to share with us some sad songs…

“Songs of Utter and Abject Desperation” by Zac Pennington

In the summertime, these are the cartoonish sorts of melodrama that get boxed and buried away with the sweaters and soup cans. Fast-forward a few months, to these dimming days of grey, and they somehow all seem like reasonable expressions of universal truth—not pouting, puerile hysterics. It’s hard to say which is the more balanced view of things. Or perhaps not. Either way, this is how Winter 2008-09 feels so far in my headphones. (Author’s note: This collection attempts to exclude the likely list of professional miserablists [Cohen, Morrissey, etc.], who’s catalog of despair goes a little too deep to be able to pin-point moments of pronounced darkness.)

MP3: Shirley Bassey – I (Who Have Nothing)
Shirley Bassey is probably my favorite singer—she makes every word she sings sound like it’s the last thing she plans to come out of her mouth. “I Who Have Nothing” is just about the most desperate stab at the gut she’s ever managed—that sad kitten “pressed up against the window pane” line absolutely slays.

The Shangri-Las – Past, Present and Future
The ultimate expression of Mary Weiss’ bang-swept forlorn, set questionably to the soundtrack of “Moonlight Sonata”—“Past, Present, and Future” is the Shangri-las’ most bizarre-o moment. Also: their best?

Scott Walker – Next / Farmer in the City
An unprecedented tie in the playlist department, I give you two sides to the Scott Walker coin: 1968’s creepy orchestral masterpiece “Next,” and 1995’s haunt(ed/ing) “Farmer In the City”. “Next” is Walker’s most visceral lament amongst his many Jacque Brel renditions, the content—from the “wet head of [his] first case of gonorrhea” to the “burn[ing him]self alive”—bleeding with violent (if somewhat campy) despair. “Farmer In the City,” on the other hand, is pure moodpiece—the strings and hollow falsetto propelling perhaps the most bleakly emotive tone Walker ever managed. Both are devastating.

MP3: Dirty Projectors – A Labor More Restful
Perhaps more firmly realist than desperate, this beautifully realized Longstreth ballad may simply betray a certain personal desperation in your faithful narrator—the fear of responsible, adult resignation. In some ways it feels like Dirty Projectors’ “Everybody Hurts” moment—an abridgement of the typical obscurity for the sake of an eloquent bomb drop on the human condition. (So okay, “Everybody Hurts” fails miserably in this ambition, but still: I stand by my comparison).

MP3: Big Star – Holocaust
The most believably bleak song ever written, ever.

You Ain’t No Picasso Mixmas 2008
Ivana XL | Henry Clay People | These United States | Cotton Jones | The Bicycles | Pas/Cal