\n1. Hidden Charms (Charles Clark)\n2. It’ll Never Happen Again (Tim Hardin)\n3. Superfly (Curtis Mayfield)\n4. He Wants To Play Hearts (Ryan Adams)\n5. I’ll Run Your Hurt Away (Ruby Johnson)\n6. Ambulance Blues (Neil Young)\n7. Needle Of Death (Bert Jansch)\n8. You Can Have Him (The Cake)\n9. La Maison oú j’ai Grandi (Françoise Hardy)\n10. Traction In The Rain (The Cros)\n11. Moonraker (Shirley Bassey/John Barry) Info\n\n

The late-night road trip: half-lit visions in the rear-view\nmirror, road signs looming like phantoms. Darkness settles into the\ncar’s interior; the driver’s companions asleep, or dreaming. The\ndistant AM radio signal fades in and out, trailing into static. You\nfumble in the glove box for the car tape, hold it up for a moment\nto the dull lights reflected through the windscreen; typically, it\nneeds rewinding. The cassette deck’s motors whir into motion, then\nclunk to a stop and for the next 45 minutes, this car tape is like\nnothing you’ve ever heard. Half-forgotten songs take on a startling\nnew ghost-life, inhabiting a parallel world where the road, time\nand space, memory, dreams and thoughts are held in suspension,\nwhile you’re propelled in your little capsule towards… somewhere\nelse. It’s as if you’ve crossed some invisible, inner state line,\nand you’re heading for someplace that only the car tape songs can\ntake you to, or from.

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‘Car Tape 2’, is the new album from acclaimed Australian\nsinger-songwriter Lisa Miller, the much anticipated follow up to\n2002’s original ‘Car Tape’ which was both inspired by, and made in\nthe spirit of, the quintessential car tape experience. The album\nmade it into many critics best of 2002 lists and sat at the top of\nthe Australian independent charts for close to a year. It also\nearned Miller three ARIA nominations, a second time for Best Female\nArtist as well as Best Independent and Best Adult Contemporary\nRelease.

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While the idea of a taped compilation is perhaps almost entirely\nanachronistic in 2010, ‘Car Tape’ (The Series!) is more about\nloving music and the real records it comes from and sharing it with\nfriends than it is about recycling retro imagery. It’s also about\ntravel, of the kind done at 100km/h, close to the ground, listening\nto that music in a very closed environment with those friends, and\nwith the time to listen properly.

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“I was always intrigued by those tapes that you listen to on the\nroad,” says Miller. “Those Tapes that other musicians pull out in\nthe tour van – grimy cassettes which get stuck and you have to\nstick a pen into the reel to wind them up. And they’re funny songs\nthat someone puts on a tape because they’re special to them, and\nthey’re often a bit odd. And they sound even more odd when you’re\ndriving late at night in the middle of nowhere. Everyone is quiet,\nif they’re not asleep they’re listening, hanging on every word… the\nsongs on a car tape come together as a group, often in a very\nstrange way. A good car tape is its own little world.”

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Once you’ve spent some time in the “little world” which is Lisa\nMiller’s Car Tape, the term ‘covers album’ no longer seems like an\nadequate descriptor. “I didn’t want to do covers albums, where I\nput my own slant on songs everyone knows”, Miller explains. “I\ntried to pick songs that could carry themselves, and they had to\ntend to the fairly obscure, with seductive melodies, and words that\nwouldn’t disappoint me when they were written down to be\nlearnt”.

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Miller has engaged in that somewhat mysterious process that\ngives forgotten songs a new shape, not just in the performance, but\nin the very act of selection. Just as obscure songs take on a new\nfamiliarity once they’re put on a car tape, there is also something\nthat happens to songs when they’re documented on tape, in the\n(equally old-fashioned) sense of putting songs down on tape –\nrecording live, direct to tape, in the studio. “The big test for\neach song”, says Miller, “was whether the tape loved it”. It’s what\nshe calls “the spooky relationship between tape and\nperformance”.

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Working once again with original ‘Car Tape’ producer/guitarist\nShane O’Mara, Miller returned to his Yikesville studio to lay down\na selection of tracks which includes songs by legendary songwriters\nsuch as Tim Hardin, Bert Jansch, Neil Young, David Crosby, and the\nmore contemporary Ryan Adams, as well as less likely covers of\nsongs by soul man Curtis Mayfield, ‘60s French singer Francoise\nHardy, and even a stunning take on Shirley Bassey’s James Bond\ntheme, “Moonraker”.

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‘Car Tape 2’ is, like the previous volume, compiled with love.\nDemangnetise. Rewind. Repeat-Play. Enjoy.

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