Dark Was The Night

Click on the turntable on the left to listen to a continuous stream of music featured on Pretty Much Amazing - updated every day. For more, you can check out the Best Songs of 2011, or our Best Albums of 2011.

Dark Was The Night is a 2-disc, 31-track piece of work where some of our favorite acts (Feist, Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear, The Decemberists, Spoon, Arcade Fire, Cat Power and Sufjan Stevens to name a few) hope to raise money and awareness for HIV/AIDS. Even if you don’t usually buy albums (I think that should be your New Years resolution), make an effort to purchase this one. It’s full of amazing, beautiful music and it helps a worthy cause.

On February 17th, Dark Was The Night will be available in double CD, triple vinyl, and download — all proceeds / royalties are going to the Red Hot Organization, an AIDS and HIV charitable organization that raises money and awareness for projects and research. Naturally, I’m interested in making sure as many people as possible go out and buy this, and posting any files from this compilation may hinder that goal. But you can preview some of the songs on the Dark Was The Night Myspace page. They will be streaming one new song a day (started last Thursday), so check back regularly to listen to the music.

The tracklisting is below:

THIS DISC
1 Dirty Projectors + David Byrne – Knotty Pine
2 Cello Song (Nick Drake) – The Books featuring Jose Gonzalez
3 Feist + Ben Gibbard – Train Song (Vashti Bunyan recorded, written by Alasdair Clayre)
4 Brackett, WI – Bon Iver
5 Deep Blue Sea – Grizzly Bear
6 So Far Around the Bend – The National (arrangement by Nico Muhly)
7 Tightrope – Yeasayer
8 Feeling Good (popularized by Nina Simone) – My Brightest Diamond
9 Dark Was the Night (Blind Willie Johnson) – Kronos Quartet
10 I Was Young When I Left Home (Bob Dylan) – Antony + Bryce Dessner
11 Big Red Machine – Justin Vernon + Aaron Dessner
12 Sleepless – The Decemberists
13 Stolen Houses (Die) – Iron and Wine
14 Service Bell – Grizzly Bear + Feist
15 You Are The Blood – Sufjan Stevens

THAT DISC
1 Well-Alright – Spoon
2 Lenin – Arcade Fire
3 Mimizan – Beirut
4 El Caporal – My Morning Jacket
5 Inspiration Information (Shuggie Otis) – Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
6 With A Girl Like You (The Troggs) – Dave Sitek
7 Blood Pt 2 (based on original song “You are the Blood” by the Castanets) – Buck 65 Remix (featuring Sufjan Stevens and Serengeti)
8 Hey, Snow White (Destroyer) – The New Pornographers
9 Gentle Hour (Snapper) – Yo La Tengo
10 Another Saturday (traditional song) – Stuart Murdoch
11 Happiness – Riceboy Sleeps
12 Amazing Grace (traditional song) – Cat Power and Dirty Delta Blues
13 The Giant Of Illinois (Handsome Family) – Andrew Bird
14 Lua – Conor Oberst + Gillian Welch
15 When the Road Runs Out – Blonde Redhead + Devastations
16 Love vs. Porn – Kevin Drew

:::Unrelated:::
We can all make fun of ourselves right? Right. So that is what this is all about:

Disclaimer: This is a joke.

For all of you entry level “producers” who mash-up 800 songs to get hits on Hype Machine: You’ve just been served. Mason Dent’s been producing for 6 minutes and he just “treated” your asses like a God damned magic show. What you are about to hear is terrible. It was made to be terrible and prove a point. I will elaborate more on said point with a follow-up post, but for now just take this post for what it is; an experiment of “hype”.

Feist Vs. Daft Punk Vs. Justice Vs. MGMT Vs. Animal Collective Vs. MIA Vs. Santogold Vs. Crystal Castles – 1234 We Are Your Harder Better Faster Stronger D.A.N.C.E.I.N.G. Kids (Girls) Taking Your Money on A Crimewave (HMDIV “Crookers WOW This Rules” Remix) [via Hot Bizzies]

by Luis Tovar on January 20, 2009 ‡ 0 reactions