Noah, I think it means that my mix was pretty successful, because "Survive" and "Annie Waits" are my two favorite songs on the CD, and the ones that I most wanted to bring to your attention. (When I first heard the line "You're the great mistake I never made," I guarantee that I thought You know, Noah would like that.) Most mixes, I've found, tend to produce one or two stellar discoveries at best, and if I've met my quota, then my work is done. (Although I do think that the "Survive"/"Angels" combo deserves to be heard as a unit. I've said this before, I think.)

It's interesting how a CD or MP3 player allows us to resculpt albums into the versions we like. Your version of The Bends sounds a lot like mine, except I'll usually toss tracks 1 and 2 in there as well. These days, I've been starting Hail to the Thief at track 9, "There There," playing it until the end, then looping back around to track 2. (Not that Track 1, "2+2=5", isn't good, especially at the breakdown, but for some reason I've been neglecting it.) In any case, it always takes a while for an album to exist as a whole in your brain. The exception, interestingly enough, is Sea Change: it only took a couple of listens for me to feel as if I knew it intimately, probably because the emotional tenor is so consistent between songs.

In case this isn't already obvious, Hail to the Thief and Sea Change have been fiercely competing for time on my iPod for the past week or so. In a way, they almost define a spectrum of great pop music: Hail to the Thief is expansive, weird, ambitious, and determined to do everything under the sun, often in the course of a single song. Sea Change, by contrast, is internalized, polished, and just about perfect. It's musical influences are probably just as diverse, but it's harder to tell, because it's so accessible, and because Beck seems so focused and melancholy this time around. I'd love to hear Thom Yorke make an album like this.