Lena Valencia’s Mystery Lights is one of the year’s strongest collections, filled with marvelously unsettling and sharply drawn stories.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
“Where there is glamour, there is terror in this self-assured debut collection. . . . In 10 eerie stories, Valencia leans into the horror and grit under a shiny world”
In her own words, here is Lena Valencia’s Book Notes music playlist for her story collection Mystery Lights:
In “Dogs,” the first story in Mystery Lights, Ruth, on a walk alone in the desert, listens to a playlist made for her by her teen daughter Sabrina, and is shocked by how sad the songs are. She and Sabrina haven’t been speaking. The playlist provides her with a momentary insight into her daughter’s mind and the depth of her sadness, which Ruth had previously dismissed as a hormonal teen’s overreaction.
Playlists express the unspoken or the unsayable, which is perhaps why they are so often used in the early stages of courtship: you might not be able to tell your crush that you like them, but “Friday I’m in Love” can give them a pretty good idea about your feelings. I came of age in the era of the mix CD, when burned discs with Sharpied track listings scrawled over their shine were exchanged between friends, crushes, and partners: letters from the heart.
So here is my letter from the heart—or, rather, from my book’s heart—to you. Ten songs that encompass the vibes of these stories: melancholic, angsty, unsettling. I’ve chosen one song per story, which lends itself to a 10-song playlist, perfect for a road trip through somewhere strange and maybe a little haunted. Turn it up loud. Look out for ghosts.
“Dogs”
Mitski, “Working for the Knife”
Kicking things off is this classic sad-girl jam about the ongoing tensions between art and capitalism. The speaker’s discontent with her creative life, her feelings that she’s making work for a public that doesn’t understand her (“nobody cared for the stories I had about/no good guys”) echo the struggles of Ruth in “Dogs,” who exiles herself to the desert to revise a screenplay into something more commercially palatable. (This song is definitely on the playlist Sabrina makes for Ruth.)
“You Can Never Be Too Sure”
Marissa Nadler, “Bessie, Did You Make It?”
When writing The Path of the Clouds—the album on which this song appears—Marissa Nadler had writer’s block and was inspired by the episodes of Unsolved Mysteries she was watching. This song takes the story of the 1928 disappearance of Glen and Bessie Hyde, a couple who went missing trying to raft the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. The song turns the lore into a revenge narrative where Bessie kills Glen, who had become abusive. “I was simply surviving,” sings Nadler as Bessie, in the chilling closing verse. “You Can Never Be Too Sure,” which features a college student trapped on a campus with a mythical trapper who kidnaps young women, is also about lore and survival, and Nadler’s haunting vocals evoke the feel of the story’s snowbound campus where danger lurks.
“Mystery Lights”
The Church, “Under the Milky Way”
In “Mystery Lights,” Wendy travels to Marfa to oversee a viral marketing scheme for a TV show she’s working on. Meanwhile, she worries about her daughter, who has dropped out of college and is busking on the streets of New York City. Space and planets and gazing up at the sky for answers play a big part in the story and this song by the Australian rockers The Church captures the feeling of longing and disconnect that Wendy is experiencing.
“The White Place”
R.E.M, “Hope”
Despite the deceptively upbeat melody, there’s something heartbreaking about this song’s enigmatic lyrics, which hint at a person who desperately wants to escape their situation. I first heard it when I was in the process of revising the collection and couldn’t help but think about Sandra in “The White Place,” who wants to escape her circumstances so badly she prays for aliens to abduct her.
“Bright Lights Big Deal”
Saturday Looks Good to Me, “When You Got To New York”
This sweet, sad indie ballad about the loneliness of being in New York as a young person echoes themes in “Bright Lights, Big Deal,” which follows Julia, a recent college grad who so badly wants to “make it” in New York that she ends up losing all her friends and having to start over from scratch. Coincidentally, I also listened to this album a lot around the time I first moved to Brooklyn, so it remains intertwined with my own experience of being young and feeling alone in the big city.
“Trogloxene”
The Cramps, “Goo Goo Muck”
“Trogloxene,” in which 10-year-old Max transforms into a cave-dwelling monster, is the story in the collection that owes the most to B-movie genre tropes. Though Max’s sister frets over this transformation, Max herself accepts and eventually comes to embrace her fate. “Goo Goo Muck,” silly, weird, and fun, portrays the glory of living as a monster in a catchy, rockabilly tune that evokes campy creature features of yore.
“The Reclamation”
Avalon Emerson, “Astrology Poisoning”
“This desert isn’t your friend,” sings Avalon Emerson in one of the hooks of “Astrology Poisoning,” a warning that could be applied to multiple stories in the collection. Emerson has described “Astrology Poisoning” as a song about “the evolving void that we all feel and try to fill” which seems an apt description for what Pat, the protagonist of “The Reclamation,” has in her life when she attends an all-woman “entrepreneurial wellness retreat” in the desert led by Brooke Soleil, a wellness influencer who spouts questionable maxims meant to inspire the women. Pat takes these platitudes to their grisly extremes. “Astrology Poisoning” indeed.
“Clean Hunters”
Phoebe Bridgers, “Halloween”
Phoebe Bridgers writes some of the most poignant songs about dysfunctional relationships, and this one, about the metaphorical masks lovers wear, is a personal favorite. This impulse to lie to make yourself more palatable to the one you love is also a theme in “Clean Hunters,” where Emily, one half of a newlywed ghost-hunting couple, pretends to see spirits in an attempt to salvage her marriage.
“Reaper Ranch”
Chromatics, “Shadow”
Grace, the elderly protagonist of “Reaper Ranch,” keeps seeing ghosts around her independent living facility, but not the ghost she wants to see: that of her late husband. The silver screen-worthy orchestral synth swells layered over dance beats of “Shadow” by the Chromatics suggest a yearning for something just out of reach.
“Vermilion”
Fastball, “The Way”
Fastball’s foreboding one-hit wonder about getting lost perfectly encapsulates the unsettling mood of “Vermilion.” In the story, Nancy, on a hiking trip in the Utah desert, contends with her daughter’s decades-old disappearance. She keeps thinking she sees her—first in the photos she takes, and finally in the flesh while on a hike clouded by wildfire smoke. Like the desert of “Vermilion,” there’s something about “The Way” that feels haunted, as if we’re in a car driving down an open road, enroute to an otherworldly destination.
Lena Valencia is the author of the debut story collection Mystery Lights (Tin House).