Various
Six Feet Under: Everything Ends
EMI
About to finish its fifth, final season, the genuinely groundbreaking series offers up a collection of incidental music with little in common but a sense of how valued life becomes when death is in the room. Caesars’ cover of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” feels less dark if you recall its setting — a roaring party thrown by bikers in the funeral home for a fallen brother. Arcade Fire, mournful and ahead of the curve, suits Six Feet Under to a tee. The previously unreleased “Cold Wind” would not have been out of place on Funeral . It’s unlikely you would encounter Radiohead’s “Lucky,” Bebel Gilberto’s “Aganju” and Irma Thomas’s “Time is on My Side” in the same place anywhere else. It’s like a mix tape from your most whimsical music nerd friend.
—Doug Taylor
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2007.