Four Corners Playlist: A Soundtrack for a Book
I often make playlists for writing. Usually they’re just songs that play well for certain genres, but when I’m writing something longer, I make a playlist for that specific project. Here are the top songs from my Four Corners playlist.
Handsome Family: Far From Any Road. I know this song is the theme for the first season of True Detective and yes I first heard it there. But it fit so well with my setting and theme, that I listened to it nearly everyday I was working on the early drafts.
Wagner: Siegfried- Brunhilde’s Awakening. Martin, the protagonist in Four Corners is an opera fan. I like just about any type of music, except maybe modern country or whichever classical style it is that sounds like madmen are attempting to torture their listeners with harpsichords. I did a lot of research on Wagner after playing the old Gabriel Knight game with the Wagner story. I like most of what I’ve heard of his music, it’s often loud and bombastic so works well on my writing playlists.
Horrorpops: Hitchcock Starlet. Perfect for a story involving lots of highway travel, especially for a genre novel with a lot of highway travel.
Simon and Garfunkel: America. Four Corners is maybe a much more specific setting than America as a whole, but this is one of my all time favorite road trip songs, and so much of this novel is about that feeling of traveling and seeing what’s out there.
Okkervil River: John Allyn Smith Sets Sail. A song about the poet John Berryman. I thought about his Dream Songs a lot while thinking about some of the scenes, but also about the sense of isolation that we feel, particularly when my protagonist was stuck in motel rooms and campsites on his own.
Old 97s: Four Leaf Clover. A song with great energy about feeling down on one’s luck. Couldn’t have picked a better song for keeping me going when I started to fade.
Mazzy Star: Fade Into You. This has long been one of my favorite songs for driving across the desert. Since I wanted to capture that same feeling for this book, I listened to it regularly for all of the times Martin has to drive between dig sites.
The Raveonettes: Aly Walk With Me. The feedback solos in this song… one of the best possible choices for that feeling of reality coming unhinged or colliding and scraping across another universe. Other choices here might have been the Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Cracked”, but they’re already on the list with another song and I didn’t want to pick multiples per band. I think “My Dreaming Hill” by Flying Saucer Attack probably would’ve worked as well.
Velvet Underground: Ocean. Maybe an odd choice since none of this takes place near an ocean. However I’ve associated this song with driving trips since it helped get me over the pass on Shasta on my move up to Seattle and also the first time I ever drove in the snow. Southern Californian, nervous driver to begin with, Snow! This song is super heroic.
Dead Can Dance: Rakim. I think this song captures the feeling of strangeness and otherworldliness combined with the feeling that there’s power in that chant I can’t possibly understand.
Tom Waits: Old Shoes (and picture postcards). One of the songs we always used to drunkenly sing along to at New Years. It’s on list for that feeling of “to hell with it, the road awaits.”
Aimee Mann: Pavlov’s Bell. This song is on a lot of my writing playlists. As such it’s not so specific to this work, but if you write… I got to say there’s some magic to this song. Every time it comes on, the next thing I know I’m on another page with hundred or even thousands of words suddenly existing where a blank page previously lingered.
And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead: Source Tags and Codes. Another good song for the road, but also I think a perfect spot in Trail of Dead’s career. Their earlier albums are great for the energy, a sort of petulant punk energy. Their later albums, at least as far as I’ve listened, are closer to prog. This is pretty much in the middle bridging the gap between the two, and bridging the gap between worlds is spot on for this novel.
Galaxie 500: The Other Side. Such a pretty song. Machine Gun by Slow Dive or a host of songs by Sigur Ros might be prettier, but then they wouldn’t have that same energy. Also there’s the title, the “Other Side” is perfect. Of course I also could’ve picked Spacemen 3’s song with the same title.
The Jesus and Mary Chain: Sometimes Always. Not my favorite Jesus and Mary Chain song to say the least, but it is perfect for traveling across the desert.
Roky Erickson: I Have Always Been Here Before. Roky Erickson fits wonderfully with this book. His music just feels like it fits the southwest, and then there’s the feeling that he’s seeing beyond, and this particular song fits in with the book exactly.
Mercury Rev: Goddess on a Hiway. Another great song for desert road tripping. “When I see your eyes they explode like two bugs on glass!”
Nick Cave: Brother My Cup Is Empty. This was a tough choice. I needed some Nick Cave on the playlist. This isn’t his most malevolent sounding song: I was tempted to go with “Stagger Lee,” but then Four Corners isn’t that directly violent. I needed some menace without being direct, and felt like I got that hearing Cave’s voice here. Plus the up tempo song kept me upright in my seat while I typed.
Julee Cruise: Falling (Twin Peaks theme). Twin Peaks played a huge influence on the way I think about storytelling in general and in my thinking about this novel in particular. Plus Cruise’s dreamlike voice…
Pixies: Bird Dream of Olympus Mons. My favorite Pixies song. And I think a song about a bird dreaming about flying through Martian mountains feels oddly appropriate for this novel.
Talking Heads: Life During Wartime. Another song picked both for a road trip feel and for the tempo. “Don’t get exhausted, I’ll do some driving, you oughta get you some sleep.”
Pink Floyd: Fat Old Sun. I’ve obsessed about this song over the summer. It’s so sleepy and content sounding. If Four Corners were a movie and I could pick any song for the end credits, this would be it.
