Songs for a Snowfall

We New Jerseyans and New Yorkers might get a foot of snow tomorrow, so what better time for a wintry playlist?  Let these excellent tunes accompany your shovelling, snowball fights, and/or (spiked?) hot chocolate drinking.  The snowy soundscapes presented here range sonically and emotionally, capturing the many paradoxes--stillness and movement, warmth and frigidity, renewal and death, love and despair, youth and experience--that winter embodies.  Enjoy, and stay warm!

1. Bon Iver - "Blood Bank." A song about falling in love in winter: And the snow started falling; we were stuck out in your car.  You were rubbing both my hands, chewing on a candy bar.

2. Bright Eyes - "Gold Mine Gutted." Beginning as a love story, this song ends by describing a lover's possibly fatal drug addiction: Only smoke came out our mouths on all those hooded-sweatshirt walks. ... All those white lines that sped us up; we hurry to our death.  Well, I lagged behind, so you got ahead.

3. Kanye West - "Street Lights." Whereas the other two of Kanye's "lights" songs ("All of the Lights," "Flashing Lights") are celebrations of his fame and success, "Street Lights" captures an isolated and despondent West, who turns a cab ride (in what feels to me like a snowy New York) into an existential journey: I know my destination, but I'm just not there.

4. LCD Soundsystem - "Someone Great." The song's cold, brooding, mechanical sounds epitomize not only LCD's album title, Sound of Silver, but also the numbness one feels after losing "someone great": There shouldn't be this ring of silence, but what are the options when someone great is gone?

5. Explosions in the Sky - "Snow and Lights." Moving from heavy snowstorms to light flurries back to a climactic blizzard, "Snow and Lights" lives up to evocative its title without saying a word.

6. Vampire Weekend - "Step."  (See the post below): They didn't know how to dress for the weather.  I can still see them there huddle on Astor: snow falling slow to the sound of the master.

7. Minus the Bear - "Hooray."  Describing a snowball fight and "warming on alcohol" in bars, "Hooray" celebrates youth--or acting youthfully--and the weather that brings out our joyful qualities: It's cold, and snow's actually on the ground of this no-snow town.  And instead of cars, streets [are] trafficking in sleds.  Men become boys again.

8. Crystal Castles (feat. Robert Smith) - "Not In Love."  Synths are ideal for capturing frigid sounds, but the sleety waves of synthesizers here are especially effective--and appropriate for Smith's unfeeling exclamation, "I'm not in love." 'Cause it's cold outside; when you coming home?  'Cause it's hot inside; isn't that enough?

9. Arcade Fire - "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)."  The imaginative opening lines from Arcade Fire's debut remain among the group's best poetry: And if the snow buries my neighborhood ... Climb out the chimney and meet me in the middle of the town.  And since there's no one else around, we let our hair grown long and forget all we used to know.  Then our skin gets thicker from living out in the snow.

10. The XX - "Shelter."  "Shelter" reminds me of watching snow fall from behind a pane of glass: the separation between coldness and warmth is thin.  This song's warm guitars and Croft's shaking, almost insecure voice shatter that barrier, allowing these conflicting feelings to coexist in an unsettling love song: I find shelter in this way: undercover, hideaway.

11. Bright Eyes - "Something Vague."  Conor Oberst epitomized so many of my adolescent winters that he gets to make two appearances here.  On what may be his angstiest, but also one of his finest, albums, a young Oberst quivers as he paints a sad portrait of an alcoholic: You see your breath in the air as you climb up the stairs to the coffin you call your apartment. And you sink in your chair, brushing snow from you hair, and drink the cold away.  And you're not really sure what you're doing this for, but you need something to fill up the days.

12. The Good Life - "A Golden Exit." The final song from The Good Life's Novena on a Nocturn represents both bitter ends (of relationships, even of life) and cathartic renewals: I can feel the chill in the air between us.  I can feel a winter coming; we're frozen in our stares.  ... I woke up this morning to the silence of falling snow.  These graces of beauty have left me so cold.

November Mixtape

Highlighting the songs I've discovered, rediscovered, or repeatedly played each month. The order reflects an attempt to create a cohesive mixtape, not to rank the songs in any way. 

I've written ten of these this year, so I'm not going to falter this late in the game.  Hopefully writing this will distract me from checking my email neurotically/growing increasingly hateful.  So, with one month to go(!), here are the sounds to my November:

1. Bright Eyes - "Time Code."  I went jogging one night to clear my head and escape my research paper, and listening to Digital Ash in a Digital Urn--Bright Eyes's audacious, experimental electronica album--really helped me escape myself for a little bit.  I always appreciated the album's opener, "Time Code," but I was especially struck this time by Oberst's sung/whispered line: "sh-- don't talk, don't talk." I think it's interesting how the song becomes instrumental after that, as Oberst silently hovers over the world his album will subsequently explore: we hear the screaming baby from "Ship in a Bottle," murmurs from the crowds from which Oberst withdraws, and the bells from "Gold Mine Gutted."  While the intro could be foreshadowing or previewing the album's songs, I think it's more about picking up transmissions of "noise."  (Note: thinking about Don DeLillo's White Noise completely changed my interpretation of this song).

DeLillo shows how our consumerist, media-saturated society worships commodities and replaces religion with shopping.  Compare, for instance, the everyday activities of people living in a Puritan versus a postmodern culture: the former observed God everywhere and in everything, while the latter observes the hyper-saturation of advertisements and media.  Because we are incessantly bombarded with TV, ads, radio, media, etc., we begin to speak unconsciously its language of consumerism: the media has altered our consciousness.  I think Oberst sees this, and his opening song is a fantasy about escaping the world's noise (ironically on his noisiest album to date).  Thus, on "Time Code," we can only hear bells, screams, or murmurs, not the tainted language of postmodern culture.  This retreat from spoken language is intriguing since Oberst is so renowned for his songwriting -- maybe he's trying to escape himself, too.  But then the alarm clock rings and it's back to reality; he must speak.  And probably not coincidentally, his next words are: "It was Don DeLillo."

September Mixtape

Highlighting the songs I've discovered, rediscovered, or repeatedly played each month. The order reflects an attempt to create a cohesive mixtape, not to rank the songs in any way. 

In one month, Spotify has opened my eyes to so much new music, especially recent work from artists I've enjoyed in the past but recently neglected.  So let's get to it:

September Mix from kevstevxx on 8tracks Radio.

1. Passion Pit - "I'll Be Alright."  Another devastating song whose title could end up being the ironic epitaph of troubled lead singer Michael Angelakos.  Like almost all of PP's music, though, this bubbly pop track is catchy and enduring.

2. Crystal Castles feat. Robert Smith (of The Cure) - "Not in Love."  I always liked the original of this song because of the waves of synths that kick in during the chorus.  But it felt understated (as does the large majority of Crystal Castles's electronica) because of Alice Glass's murmured vocals.  Smith's addition totally reinvigorates "Not in Love," transforming the pessimistic line "I'm not in love" into a triumphant anthem.  I've listened to this song over and over again; it's so catchy, builds up gradually, and has a huge payoff at the chorus.  I need check out The Cure now.

Crystal Castles (left) with Robert Smith.

3.  Passion Pit - "Mirrored Sea."  The ghostly yet zany synths that open this song are perfect.  It's such a unique, evocative sound that somehow blends seamlessly into the frenetic keys on the verse.  These discrete parts then intersect at the chorus, and it somehow works.  Sonically, this may be as dark as PP is going to get, but it's impressive new ground to tread, and it importantly balances out the sugary, "gossamer" sounds on this sophomore album with something weightier, more brooding.

Top Albums of 2011, 5-1

5.  Kevin Devine - Between the Concrete and the Clouds.  In 2008, after hearing an acoustic version of "Brother's Blood" for the first time at a Kevin Devine/Jesse Lacey show, I thought Kevin Devine's next record would be his best by a landslide.  As it turned out, "Brother's Blood" was the best song from that album (also titled "Brother's Blood"); unfortunately, though, nothing else even came close.  This is in part to the greatness of that song, but also to the horrible pacing of the album; the tracks either awkwardly bled into each other or sounded so disparate that the idea of an "album" lost its aura.  It seemed like a mix tape--one with some of Devine's weakest songs to date.

So I was apprehensive about "Concrete and Clouds," hoping that one of my favorite performers could bring more of his live energy into the studio.  I couldn't have been more pleased with the outcome.  Much like Bright Eyes' 2011 revival, Devine's lyrics remain the focal point, but now they are accompanied by a full band effort with more pronounced melodies.  The poignant "The First Hit" touches on familiar lyrical themes but sounds like a more polished song from the "Put Your Ghost to Rest" sessions.  "11-17" could have been a quiet, acoustic track, but Devine instead plucks a twangy, electric guitar, and the song ultimately breaks down into a slow-burning haze.  Songs like "11-17" capture the live energy that was absent from "Brother's Blood"; and after listening to the album through the brooding closer "I Used to Be Someone," which could have been written from Devine's or his deceased brother's perspective ("rest assured I used to be someone / A brother's brother and a mother's son"), one thing becomes clear: this is a consistent and cohesive effort--possibly the beginning of Devine's studio evolution from a singer/songwriter to the leader of a full-fledged rock band.

4.  The Weeknd - House of Balloons. From my review at The Setonian: The anonymous R&B singer The Weeknd recently released his 9-song debut, "House of Balloons" – a staggering mix of R&B, dubstep and indie/avant-garde samples. The mixtape sounds like Drake during his most wallowing moments, offering a dark and despairing insight into the world of drug consumption that, for all its sadness and futility, is also undeniably catchy, or perhaps addicting itself.  Opener "High for This" begins somewhat conventionally: hypnotic drum slugging and reverb-drowned vocals a la Drake. However, when The Weeknd implores, "Open your hand," electronic fuzz and dubstep beats suddenly pulsate, awakening the song from its swoon. This weekend party has all the elements of contemporary mainstream rap—lots of drugs and girls—but even when The Weeknd sings the song's chorus, "Even though you don't roll / Trust me girl / You wanna be high for this," he is hardly glorifying this hedonism.

The mixtape's highlight, "House of Balloons / Glass Table Girls," nears 7 minutes, beginning with fuzzy waves of electronic noise and a psychedelic sample from Siouxsie and the Banshees, which revels in its drug-filled indulgence: "This is a happy house / We're happy here in the happy house / This is fun, fun, fun, fun..." The song unwinds midway into the sludgy beat of "Glass Table Girls," capturing the dingy atmosphere of a cocaine-filled after-party: "We could test out the tables / We got some brand new tables / All glass and it's four feet wide / But it's enough to get us ten feet high." The Weeknd alters his normally echoing and despondent vocals with aggressive and confrontational near-whispering, evoking tension and a sense of looming danger.  "House of Balloons / Glass Table Girls" captures the ethos of the perpetually high hip-hop and rap scene, and it is therefore not just one of the better songs released this year but also one of the most culturally and historically significant.

Much like Elliott Smith's posthumous "From a Basement on a Hill," a haunting collection of songs about drug-addiction and dying recorded when Smith essentially was a walking corpse, "House of Balloons" sounds frighteningly earnest—the harrowing words from a moribund singer. If true art is suffering, "House of Balloons" is a ghastly masterpiece.

3.  M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming.   If a group says they are influenced by "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness," chances are I'm going to listen.  "Hurry Up We're Dreaming" is a joyous album; it's not only just thoroughly enjoyable, but it is one of those albums that makes me happy every time I listen to it, from the stellar "Intro" and MGMT-esque single, "Midnight City" to the childlike visions on "Raconte-Moi Une Histoire" all the way through the second disc, the 22nd song.  I will have much more to say about this album once I review its individual songs and M83 at Terminal 5 (which I paid an arm and a leg for to get me and my brother in).

2.  Bon Iver - Bon Iver, Bon Iver.  Beautiful, majestic, "Holecene."  A perfect album and the fact that it came out in the summer was a pretty daring move for an artist whose music and persona are associated with winter, snow, and log cabins.

I don't care if the last song, "Beth/Rest," sounds like Phil Collins; it remains one of my favorites. Especially when Vernon proclaims, "I ain't living in the dark no more."  What a great line, especially for someone who's unfairly portrayed as a self-wallowing recluse.

One of the many reasons I really enjoy this album is very subjective: nostalgia.  I streamed this record over and over at my summer internship, and it just reminds me of the good times and great people (and no crippling grad school stress) there.  I loved that job and was so sad to leave.  But I still have this album to bring me back, which isn't the worst consolation gift.

1.  The Weeknd - Thursday.  The difference between "House of Balloons" and "Thursday" can be found in their covers: the monochrome debut versus the colorful contrasts on the sophomore mixtape.  I wouldn't love "Thursday" if I didn't love "House of Balloons;" it's the perfect follow-up to a phenomenal debut, adding color to an occasionally bleak palette.  "Life of the Party" revels in the Carnivalesque--it's loud, bold, swanky, dirty, and sadistic: "if you want to go downtown with the drugs in your body / take that step, you're the life of the party."  I don't believe that the Weeknd is a sadistic person but just an imaginative lyricist; he creates a terrifyingly realistic narrative, where vultures ("The Birds" series) scour drug-filled parties for their inebriated female prey. I think this album could be a fashionable listen--something I'm just really into this year and will eventually not like as much--but I cannot deny that this was the album I listened to and enjoyed the most this year, and I'm still loving it.

July 30 - Holocene

This is the most gorgeous song from, by far, my favorite album of 2011: Bon Iver. "Holocene" is another one of those songs that sends chills to the core with lines like "and at once I knew I was not magnificent," but, despite such a devastating lyric, it still sounds hopeful, gushing with beauty. Another great addition to Bon Iver's near-impeccable catalog, it's not surprising that this is going to be Bon Iver's next single.