“uh…i made you a mixtape…”

So just so you know, there’s a mixtape at the end of all this. It’s like dessert.

My first deep dalliances with indiepop dovetailed perfectly with the early days of the internet. I spent insane amounts of money on magazines like Option and Alternative Press (which was really, really good in the early 90s) and tried to find as many ‘zines as my pathetic college town could muster, but I wanted some kind of real-world community where I could talk about all these new bands I was discovering.

I can’t remember how it was that I came to find the e-mail listserv known as the Indiepop List (now semi-legendary among pop fans of a certain age), but after just a few weeks of membership my head was spinning, trying to tell BMX Bandits from Kleenex Girl Wonder.

The best part about that list was the music sharing. Every few months the list would assemble a ‘tape trading circle.’ Users who signed up were e-mailed a name and address, and they had a few weeks to get together a mixtape for the name that they were given. There was this weird anticipation that started building as the due date neared — would you finish your tape in time? And would the tape you got in return be any good? I tended to get just as excited about the envelope as the tape it contained; one month I got a bright blue cassette with a return address in Japan. It almost didn’t matter what was on the tape, I’d made this odd connection with someone I’d never meet.

Because it was, after all, the Indiepop List, the songs all hewed religiously to a particular aesthetic, and it was that style that came to inform much of my music listening. The aesthetic was as follows: jangle, jangle, distort, big chorus, “I like you,” middle eight, “but you don’t like me,” end. I have about 15 tapes like this, and I love every one of them.

So in the spirit of the early days of the internet, I’ve made you a mixtape. It’s twee to the core, the perfect Springtime Crush Tape to accompany the season’s giddy, furtive romances. And it’s 45 minutes long — so it can perfectly fit on one side of a 90 minute tape. Listening to it, I realized it’s the sonic equivalent of emptying 125 Pixie Sticks into your mouth.

Yeah, it’s pretty awesome.

You can go to the individual albums below, or just use the playlist I made here.

1. “Anyone Can Make a Mistake” – The Wedding Present
2. “Happy All the Time” – The Flatmates
3. “Words & Smiles” – Tiger Trap
4. “Nothing to be Done” – The Legends
5. “The Way to Market Station” – The Aislers Set
6. “Throw Aggi Off the Bridge” – Black Tambourine
7. “Three Star Comparment” – Heavenly
8. “In Spite of These Times” – Close Lobsters
9. “You Tell Me” – the Go-Betweens
10. “Felicity” – Orange Juice
11. “To Live & Die in the Airport Lounge” – My Teenage Stride
12. “If You Need Someone” – The Field Mice
13. “Pack Your Things and Go” – The Softies
14. “Cleaning Out the Store” – The Harvest Ministers