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.

August 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 guess obsessively watching Breaking Bad every night after work detracted from my music listening this month.  Oh well -- I have a feeling I will be spending a lot more time with my computer and headphones this fall....

August Mix from kevstevxx on 8tracks Radio.

1. LCD Soundsystem - "North American Scum."  A catchy, danceable, and humorous satire that initially attacks Americans (Oh I don't know, I don't know, oh, where to begin / When we're North American. / But in the end we make the same mistakes all over again. / Come on North Americans!) but ultimately criticizes the non-Americans who label all of us "scum" ("I hate the feeling when you're looking at me that way / cause we're north Americans. / But if we act all shy, it’ll make it ok / Makes it go away").  I feel that most nationalistic music either makes America seem like the greatest triumph of human civilization or a hellhole of depression, recession, racism, etc.  But Murphy keeps a level-head, vocalizing his insecurities about being an American while also defending his country during what I remember as an embarrassing period in US foreign relations (2007).  The song seems just to drip with sarcasm, from the "North America!" chants to Murphy's wild vocals, but it also rocks out during the chorus. I don't know how I overlooked this track for so long  (I guess it's because I just keep "Someone Great" and "All My Friends" on repeat when I need my LCD fix) since it fits into my increasingly growing love for spoken-word vocals.

January 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.

1. M83 - "Intro."  I never listened to Zola Jesus before, but she's a guest vocalist here, and her vocals really make the song.  Anthony Gonzalez shouts urgently to "carry on," while she sings with more equanimity.  The atmosphere of "Intro" is incredible, almost intergalactic (now there's an adjective I've never used to describe music!): it sounds like the song is about to explode, take off into space, and once the mounting tension finally releases, keys rush by like shooting stars.  It almost reminds me of the sounds you hear in Mario Kart when the balloon animal thing shoots out a trophy.  I know it's a specific and silly example, but it's fitting for a group whose music focuses on nostalgia--capturing the glories of childhood without the bitterness of the present.
   
   
2. M83 - "Midnight City." These songs have to be placed back to back; they work so well together and are two standouts from 2011.  I can't just stop listening to this album after "Intro;" once I hear the MGMT-esque synths, I have to listen for the sax solo (which I would usually find cheesy, but here it just works), and then I can't turn this album off.  It's a glorious song, one that reminds me, importantly, that great music doesn't have to be sad.