Requiem for Dying Mothers, Part 1

The first track on The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid, credited to Wiltzie and McBride and made at home, like the rest of the album, by trading DAT tapes between their two cities. The Austin Chronicle heard the two-part Requiem as built entirely from plain chord progressions and variations on them. Pitchfork placed Part 1 at number 353 among the 500 best tracks of the 2000s.

The piece lived on beyond the album. A version of more than eleven minutes appeared on Brainwashed's compilation Brain in the Wire in 2002, and an 11:25 Requiem on Peace (For Mom), a 2008 Brainwashed charity set in memory of founder Jon Whitney's mother. Requiem String Melody, a short outtake from the Tired Sounds sessions, came out on the 2007 tour CD Carte-de-Visite. The upload in the hypersongs web is the album version.

Live

Alongside December Hunting for Vegetarian Fuckface, the Requiem was the band's most played piece. setlist.fm logs Part 1 24 times, from Whelan's in Dublin on 23 November 2007, and the band played both parts at their final show in Reykjavik in December 2017. At the filmed Boiler Room show in a New York church in 2015, Requiem String Melody sat between the two parts, played with strings. In 2013 they performed it with the Wordless Music Orchestra, and in 2016 at the Barbican with the Echo Collective quartet.