A Band For All Seasons
In many aspects of life I am a basket case, however deep and affecting any of my pseudo or real neuroses may be I can say for sure the way I listen to music is NOT intrinsically linked to the weather on a day to day basis. Now, with that being said I will admit to the fact that my taste in music is most definitely influenced by the seasons, for some reasons there are certain records that sound amazing to me in the fall but I can’t even get all the way through in the summer. I don’t know this happens, I don’t know why I’m more prone to listen to certain albums when there is snow on the ground and others when its hitting 100 and the air shimmers into blurred pixels over the pavement. It could have something to do with when I discovered a band, it could even be that I’m using the music as some kind of retrofitted soundtrack to all of the memories I’ve accumulated within a given season. Dissection is boring, acceptance and presentation is the new existentialism.
Spring – Spring, rainy, warm spring. New life is in the air, growth and color shake off the dust and death hangover of winter. Spring is a hard one for me because I look at my record collection and I think, its nice outside, the music should be fun, shouldn’t it, what is fun here? Turns out when it all shakes down Pavement is actually a pretty damn fun band. Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is one of the best rock records of the 90’s, its fun, light, airy, it’s everything a great spring day should be. I had a few other albums to choose from, Growing’s The Sky Runs Into The Sea has a certain sense of life to it, an immediacy palpable even the drone of the music. Animal Collective’s Feels is all about love and life, two things spring is more or less all about. Beulah’s The Coast Is Never Clear is another good example of an album that is fun to listen to with the windows down in the car letting the horns blast out which is, seriously, the only way to listen to any music with horns other than jazz.
Summer – Good God do I ever hate summer. Hockey season seems years away, its mind numbingly hot outside and the vegetation is so thick you’re almost assured to lose at least one disc golf disc before September bring a little relief with the leaves and the temperature finally falling. In the summer time my tastes go low lo-fi, I think maybe listening to records that sound like they were recorded in a basement gives me a sense of the cool, damp air found in most downstairs dwellings. Times New Viking Present The Paisley Reich is a great album for the summer. From the kick-start guitars of “Imagine Dead John Lennon” through the lock down groove of “Let Your Hair Grow Long” its abuzz with fuzz and buried hooks all the way through. Guided By Voice’s Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes came close with this one but wound up a little too chilly sounding. Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica was a thought but its just too shambling and long. Tall Dwarf’s 3ep’s is another nice disc that will keep you out of the heat and in the air conditioning. If you’re one of those types that seems to enjoy the outdoors then you could do a lot worse than Collections of Colonies of Bees record Birds, a nice post rock piece that won’t crush you under its weight, and Tortoise is great for those long, extended summer nights.
Fall – This one is set in stone. This one is tried and true as the mating habits of Salmon. As soon as the weather breaks, as soon as the leaves develop a touch of color thats when the Jawbreaker comes ringing through my speakers. Unfun, Bivuoauc, 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, Dear You, all of them get so many spins through late September until early December that I’m surprised I don’t have to buy new copies every January. Frog Eyes comes close, The Golden River and Tears of the Valedictorian are both records that see their plays jump in my place around this time of year, along with The Getty Address by The Dirty Projectors.
Winter - Winter may seem dire and dreary to some but to me it is perfection. The cold delivers a clean, pure feeling. Nights grow longer and you spend more time inside, cloistered up with a new sense of intimacy and a feeling of hiding away from the world, which I enjoy. One record that captures that feeling is The Walkmen’s Bows and Arrows. The organs sound chilly, they sound downright frosty bouncing off the guitars and the intricate percussion. Kid A is a big one here, as is Liar’s Drum’s Not Dead and Galaxie 500’s Today and On Fire. The Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin strikes me as a winter album though I don’t really know why, the rest of the lips catalogue falls wholly into the realm of summer tunes. I’m pretty sure it’s just the sad vibe that runs through it, that and the fact that the song “Sleeping on the Roof” reminds me of snowfall. Another one that always gets a spin at least once a winter is Cannibal Ox’s “The Cold Vein”. I’m not going to pretend to know a lot about hip hop. I know Aesop, MF Doom, Ghostface, Wu-Tang, all of the standard white indie kid stuff, but there’s something about The Cold Vein, it has a power, that cold, cold NYC feel to it that comes across beautifully in a late night snow storm when you’re sitting alone watching the flakes fall.
What about you reading this? What do you think? What are your seasons like?
When I first started reading this I immediately thought, “yes exactly! The music I listen to is based on the seasons.” But the more I read and thought, the more I realized it wasn’t true. I listen to music based on how I feel at the time. Not necessarily at the moment, but how I feel in general, about myself, my job, my life, etc.
The first time I hear a song or really getting into a song I remember how I feel at the time and later on based on how I’m feeling, I listen to that song again.
For instance, Aesop Rock and Krafty Kuts: Tricka Technology remind me of the summer after my sophomore year when I lived at home and worked as an intern in St. Peters. I would drive with my sister around town with the windows down and we’d listen to the songs together talking about random things going on. It was my first glimpse at what real life might be for an actual engineer and I had a love/hate relationship with it. It’s how my sister got her nickname “wooly mammoth.”
My sophomore year at uni I remember being in love with the songs Spit on a Stranger by Pavement, Saliva’s Rest in Pieces and the song whose name I can’t remember for the life of me right now but went “this is the last time that I’m gonna give in tonight/this is the last time that I’m gonna come here tonight” (Angels and Devils by Dishwalla, I found it!). It was the best year of my life but it definitely had some lows and those two songs always came through for me.
Freshmen year and the parties I went to is remembered by Sean Paul’s Get Busy and some music by 50 Cent.
The problem with my music selection is that I’m always reminded of the memories created when I was listening to the songs and thus I’m always looking back and not forward. I need new music so I can make new memories but the combination of always moving around a lot and not being close to the people I knew who were really into music and could suggest things means I listen to main stream crap that doesn’t really make me feel anything.
And now I am off topic. That and the combination of me not writing well means this is long, drawn out, and I probably won’t post it. It comes down to, I like to listen to music that intensifies the way I am feeling in life. All I ever really want or have wanted, is to feel.