Welcome to The Listening Booth, a regular series of posts that features a guest musician, DJ or music devotee sharing their current three favourite songs with automatism readers. Today's Listening Booth is hosted by the brilliantly talented and lovely DJ Rachel Thera. Enjoy.
______________________________________________________
About Rachel
Hailing from Ottawa, Canada, Rachel DJs around town under her creative nom de plume, Lamb Rabbit. Last year she founded a lady-DJ collective called The Girlfriends. This year she plans to master the guitar and start a soft psych band. Next year she plans on subsisting exclusively off of fancy grilled cheese sandwiches.
You can find some of Rachel's mixes here.
Recently Rachel was interviewed on CBC's All In A Day programme to talk about the mixtapes she created as a DJ for CHUO's Summer Jam Swap. For the show she was asked play four songs — today she shares with us three from the list of songs she selected for the CBC.
Rachel's Three Picks
Summer of Love Mixtape Edition
I played all of these songs in sequence on July 18 at the Summer Jam Swap, which is an annual mixtape exchange fundraiser for CHUO, a local community radio station here in Ottawa. These three love songs link up lyrically, but best of all they all exhibit the eternal optimism of summer.
Enrique Guzmán: Amigos Y Novios
A delightfully growly Mexican cover of Nancy Ames' Friends and Lovers Forever, this 60s sing-songy gem is pure sunshine. All pretence is stripped away, the bedrock of summer romances revealed with the repetition of the phrase “we are friends and lovers forever.” Plus the closing oh baby babies transition into my next pick, which starts with ooh babies (and just so happens to be called Baby. Although of course, nothing just-so-happens with mixtapes).
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti feat. DāM-FunK: Baby
This is a gorgeous, oneiric cover of the original by Donnie & Joe Emerson. Ariel's paid a loving tribute to a song he's clearly obsessed with. A haunting hymn of infatuation, the hopelessly love-stricken, deceptively simple lyrics give off the unmistakable air of summer.
Beach Boys: All I Wanna Do
The Beach Boys are the go-to group for summer anthems, but I wanted to avoid the early years. Plucking anything from the Endless Summer comp hardly counts as inspired. Instead, I went with one of my favourites off of Sunflower. Listening to All I Wanna Do is like walking through a dream. It is sweet whispers of devotion and the best of intentions. Love, but wiser; grown up, full-bodied.