A friend of mine was talking the other day about how she has strict rules of what she listens to and when. In her mind, is a clear sense of what is proper, mood-fitting music for each of the four seasons, and she doesn't ever diverge from listening to an album in the time of year she deems appropriate.
Several factors can determine an album's place for her. Foremost among them is the weather outside when she first hears the music, where the artist's genre in general fits most comfortably in a year and the season during which a particular album is released (presumably built-in to avoid denying herself new releases). As she was delineating all this for me, I sat fascinated at how someone could put so much organized thought into their listening habits and could be so resolved to stick to a certain model which would seem quite irksome in practice.
I realized that she was a bit of a fanatic, but at the same time she was getting at something pretty interesting: Some music does fit remarkably well during a certain season, and when you try to listen to something that is at odds with its surroundings, sometimes it doesn't work at all. The following is a guide for each of the seasons, based on our discussion of what seems most suitable throughout the course of a year.
*Autumn*
Historically, this is the most romantic and reflective time of year. The ideal soundtrack is therefore music of highly subdued, expressively bittersweet introspection, like Leonard Cohen's intensely poetic Songs From A Room or Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left as well as sad bastard"" mope-rock of the Belle and Sebastian and Pedro the Lion variety. Jazz is brilliant in the fall as well, especially Thelonious Monk's At the Blackhawk and Yusef Lateef's Before Dawn. Finally, we agreed that no autumn would be complete without the gorgeous and eternal music of Elliott Smith.
*Winter*
This season is ideally suited to stark, forbidding post-punk, providing a large enough stretch of time to finally take out the Fall's five-disc Peel Sessions box set and get to work. Bands like Portishead and Massive Attack make for a marvelous trip-hop soundtrack to a winter wonderland. Their floating melancholia and bitingly icy vocals complement the outside weather well and lyrically paint a picture as dreary as your surroundings. Understated lo-fi bands, such as the Mountain Goats, the Microphones and Grandaddy are also stellar for burrowing in and feeling comfortably numb.
*Spring*
The time of reawakening. There's nothing quite like shamelessly pulling out poppy pleasures during this time of year and rejoicing with jubilance. Fleetwood Mac and Madonna tend to be particularly compelling in this regard. Baroque-pop can also find a nice home in the spring - like the beautiful, sparkling sound of Stars' Set Yourself on Fire, Beck's Mutations or most anything by the Magnetic Fields. Finally, the light-hearted sounds of swing and big band music, like Benny Goodman or Artie Shaw, are often a perfect complement for the whimsical freshness of spring.
*Summer*
The season made for loud guitar rock, Ã la the Kinks, the Stooges and the early Who. Blistering late-night blues is also perfectly suited for summertime - Screamin' Jay Hawkins, John Lee Hooker and New Orleans' Professor Longhair rarely sound better. Finally, sunshine kingpins the Beach Boys are a given for this time of year - but even listened to out of season, like in mid-March, they remind us that summertime is just around the corner...
Tired of the Mountain Goats and Microphones? Longing for the warmth of the Kinks and the Beach Boys? Vent to Ben at bpeterson1@wisc.edu.
