I made this playlist while I was reading American Gods, because I couldn’t get the book out of my head even when I wasn’t actively devouring it. Some of the songs are actually mentioned or the lyrics quoted in the book, while some just seemed particularly appropriate for certain scenes or characters. It goes in more or less chronological order, so if you’re especially canny you can follow the narrative of the book from beginning to end in these 15 songs. You can download a .zip of the whole mix here.
- Patsy Cline - “Walkin’ After Midnight”
- The Velvet Underground - “Who Loves the Sun”
- Spoon - “Goodnight Laura”
- Bob Dylan - “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”
- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - “Red Right Hand”
- Wilco - “Bull Black Nova”
- Louis Armstrong with Gordon Jenkins and his Orchestra - “Winter Wonderland”
- Traffic - “No Face, No Name, No Number”
- Tom Waits - “Tango Till They’re Sore”
- Ryan Adams - “The Shadowlands”
- Daniel Goyone, Trilok Gurtu, Marc Bertaux, Jean-Marc Phillips & François Du Bois - “Balkis”
- Josh Ritter - “Folk Bloodbath”
- The Animals - “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”
- Indigo Girls - “Closer to Fine”
- Paul Simon - “America”
