Unoriginal Soundtracks: Alan Wake Edition

Every other Wednesday I share a playlist of songs tangentially related to a single game or series. Songs about alien sex for Mass Effect, songs about world leaders for Civilization, and so on. Searching for random terms on Spotify is a great way to discover new music and rediscover old classics.

Alan Wake, like Max Payne before it, is simultaneously great and trash. It embraces King-Koontz thriller novels and exaggerates them like Payne did to noir cinema and comics. It's a guilty pleasure -- its melodrama is laughable at times, but Alan is a nuanced character I cared for more than enough to help find his wife. It's derivative, but that's what Remedy do best -- they grind popular culture into a brilliant condensed pulp.

Or listen in Spotify.

#1 - The Go! Team and Chuck D - Flashlight Fight

If you're listening to this playlist on Spotify, you've got the Chuck D-less version of this song. It's even crazier, as the drums, harmonica, and brass engulf Ninja's vocals. (Yes, that's her name.) It's like nothing I've heard before -- so catchy, but incomprehensible. It's a happy mess that gets into your head but can only stay as an impression of a song, not remembered verses and choruses.

#2 - Bob Dylan - Series of Dreams

This is a cast-off from Bob Dylan's 1989 album Oh, Mercy. He's made some terrible music (like gospel abortion Saved) and it's baffling how left it off an album only nine years after having made Saved.

#3 - Roger McGuinn and Calexico - One More Cup of Coffee

This cover comes from one of my favorite albums ever. The soundtrack to I'm Not There (a dreamlike fictionalization of Dylan's life before the motorcyle crash that almost killed him in 1966) is possibly the greatest tribute album ever.

#4 - Bright Eyes - Deviltown

Although The Late Great Daniel Johnston (from which this track comes) is a contender for that title. Disk one is a covers album, and disk two is a best-of. I gave both to my little sister and she can't get past the weird vocals and sometimes terrible production of the originals. The infinitely more listenable covers make it the perfect introduction to a great songwriter.

#5 - Drive-By Truckers - Self Destructive Zones

Drive-By Truckers are doing the whole super-group thing backwards. They started with an embarrassment of songwriters who now have solo careers. Jason Isbell left in 2007 to go it alone, and Patterson Hood has released two solo albums while sticking with the band. Shona Tucker has been increasing her share of the songwriting credits since 2008. There's no shortage of creativity in these Southern friends of the Hold Steady.

#6 - Anthrax - Black Lodge

I don't know much Anthrax, but I know enough to be surprised by this. It seems the new vocalist John Bush pushed the band in a more melodic direction. The rest of Sound of White Noise -- Bush's first album with Anthrax -- is closer to the Anthrax I thought I knew, but more sinister and less fun than hits like Madhouse or Caught in a Mosh.