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Letters To Cleo have curated a Spotify playlist for Billboard, and we are here for it.
The 20-song collection, whipped up for the magazine’s #TBT Mixtape series, has a nice bit of Boston representation, including tracks from Buffalo Tom, The Lemonheads, Belly, The Gravel Pit, Morphine, and more. They pair us nicely with classic cuts from The Replacements, Sloan, Veruca Salt, Teenage Fanclub, Pavement, and others.
“Before there was a tour bus and free dinners and gigs with towels backstage, there were endless (pre-internet/cellphone) cramped tours in the van,” Kay Hanley tells Billboard. “With limited sources of entertainment, we devoured music. Over the years we developed a finely tuned democracy in making our album choices and either by fate or osmosis, a similar collective palate. Here are some of my absolute favorites (in and out of the van).”
The playlist arrives just in time to hype some pretty big moments in the ongoing Letters To Cleo saga. The Boston alt-rock band, who broke out in the ’90s with the iconic hit “Here And Now,” are re-releasng their first three albums on vinyl, and play The Paradise Rock Club in Boston over three nights next month. Each of the shows will feature an album played in its entirety, and the lineup shakes out like this: Aurora Gory Alice on November 16, Wholesale Meats And Fish on November 17, and Go! on November 18. The Blake Babies will open each show; click here for ticket info.
Featured image by Liz Linder.
Before their Sinclair show last fall, Vanyaland’s Victoria Wasylak chatted with Hanley backstage about their comeback and all sorts of other rad shit, and you can watch the interview below.