Essential Sounds of Winter: Part 1 of 2
February 9th, 2010 | by jason grishkoff, Jess Alatorre, camden andrews, el gringo rico, taylor fife and J Meagher | published in playlists | 2 comments
On December 23rd, the Washington D.C. area received 16 inches of snow, making it the sixth largest snow storm the area had seen in recorded history. Shortly thereafter, I escaped to my home country of South Africa, where summer reigned supreme. I thought, perhaps, that D.C. had seen the worst of the bad weather, but upon my return I was greeted with quite the opposite.
Since the New Year, we have been hammered. Last weekend, we toppled Christmas’s record, with nearby areas reporting up to 3 feet of the cold, fluffy stuff. With another 10-20 inches predicted for Tuesday-Wednesday, we’re pretty sure it’s time to present our Essential Sounds of Winter. So join us as a few of Indie Shuffle’s contributors share the albums that they like to whip out when there’s no choice but to stay indoors.
16. Minus the Bear – Planet of Ice
What’s so good? By Camden Andrews
For a band that has been known for happy-go-lucky hits like “Absinthe Party at the Fly Honey Warehouse” and “Hey! Is That a Ninja Up There?”, Planet of Ice was a surprisingly serious album. Judging by the title and the cover artwork, it’s also a consciously colder album.
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Minus the Bear – When We Escape
Minus the Bear seemed to have grown up a lot here. They’ve become jaded by the life of sex, drugs and rock and roll and seemed to have grown past their wilder years. The songs are just as contagious and the subject matter doesn’t exactly change, they’re just set to a chillier mindset.
15. Thievery Corporation – The Richest Man in Babylon
What’s so good? By el grinco rico
Alright, to be honest, I chose this album for the winter list because it reminds me the most of skiing and snow capped mountains. It’s great skiing music. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give this band a shot just because you don’t ski. DC based Thievery Corporation are 2-man DJ duo that has extrapolated over the years into a huge powerful dance club production.
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Thievery Corporation – Heaven’s Gonna Burn Your Eyes
Richest Man in Babylon is incredibly trance-like and certainly thought provoking — many of the songs like “The Outernationalist” and “The State of the Union” are deeply entrenched with a revolutionary international vibe. But other tracks like “Heaven’s Gonna Burn Your Eyes,” featuring the Icelandic beauty Emiliana Torinni, do wonders to a genre of music unique to Theievery Corporation themselves. These guys have a huge cult following (as evidenced as their recent 7-day sold out stint in DC), and for a good reason. They take every form of international music and beautifully transform it into their own style. There’s something for everyone here.
14. Bowerbirds – Hymns
What’s so good? By J Meagher
I chose this album pre-snowpocolypse, but just to make sure it fit the winter criteria I took a walk outside with this album in ear. Oh yeah it works! This North Carolina troupe leaves space in their music you can fill in with your surroundings. Be it busy streets or quite forests, this is great walking music.
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The tree-hugging and nature-loving going on in this album could come off as preachy or wide-eyed and naïve, but their passionate delivery cuts through all the cynical bullshit and just sounds honest. I don’t know if there is a conventional “standout” track on this album cause it’s so consistently good, but “In Our Talons” has a great rollicking live sound to it.
13. Explosions in the Sky – The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place
What’s so good? By el grinco rico
Explosions in the Sky is like a reset button for the brain. With their three powerful guitars and one drummer, this 100% instrumental album is one of my favorites to reflect upon, something that I tend to do a lot during the winter, especially one as brutal as this.
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Explosions in the Sky – First Breath After Coma
Next blizzard that comes through your town, try blasting this album from the speakers and absorbing the epic guitar battles and complex plot lines. No instrumental band is as capable of weaving such a convincing story as Explosions. I like to think of this album as a beautiufl post-rock symphony narrative of how the Earth was created, or maybe how the Earth will someday be destroyed. “It is a sad and beautiful world!”
12. Feist – The Reminder
What’s so good? By Jessica Alatorre
My music-guru-sidekick-roomie thinks this song should be known as the make out song. There’s a certain sex appeal to this composition, and in the middle of winter, that’s one way to keep things interesting. While a lot of songs on The Reminder make me think of spring, “My Moon, My Man” has a certain je ne c’est quoi of nights-in with your favorite winter cuddle buddy.
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Also, the song ends as we hear footsteps running; maybe they’re running in from the cold. I pause to listen to the beautiful vocals of Leslie Feist, and in the lyrics I notice, “Take it slow, take it easy on me. Shed some light, shed some light on me please.”
It’s February. The mostly DC-based contributors of Indie Shuffle have seen historic amounts of snow for the region. So, my letter to winter: Dear gray snowy skies, shed some light on me please! At least for now I’ve got Feist to keep me happy indoors.
11. The Antlers – Hospice
What’s so good? By Camden Andrews
Hospice doesn’t really have anything to do with winter thematically. It’s about the tragic struggle of caring for a terminally ill loved one despite their resistance to the effort and the hopelessness of the situation; a unique type of pain that Adam Silberman describes with gorgeous conviction. The blend of softly swelling instrumentation and icy ambient tones accompanied by his delicate falsetto are absolutely chilling.
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As a front-to-back album experience, it’s immediately captivating and doesn’t let go from “Prologue” to “Epilogue.” This isn’t about sulking; it’s about experiencing and overcoming. While there aren’t any tales Christmas trees or hot chocolate by the fire, the emotional blizzard of this album earns it a spot on our list.
10. Bishop Allen – The Broken String
What’s so good? By Taylor Fife
In 2006 Bishop Allen embarked on an epic quest to create 12 EPs in 12 months, each with their own feel to correspond with the month it would come out. Amazingly, the group succeeded, and even more amazingly, the quality of each EP was absolutely superb.
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Bishop Allen – The News From Your Bed
In 2007 the group released The Broken String, which featured many updated and rerecorded versions of songs from their previous year’s project. One song from February and one from January made it onto the full length. The News From Your Bed closes out the album with a touching piano jam with lyrics on depression during the winter time.
9. The Notwist – Neon Golden
What’s so good? By Jason Grishkoff
The Notwist formed in 1989 in Weilheim, Germany, moving through several musical incarnations over the years, despite maintaining a relatively stable lineup. While their early records possessed a heavy metal/krautrock/dark indie rock sound, their recent efforts, for which they have received the most attention, have been very strongly influenced by electronica.
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Perhaps their first true breakthrough, Neon Golden speaks volumes to the winter listener. “Atop taut, hypnotic beds made of things like acoustic guitar, banjo, meditative sax tones, and random electro-junk, vocalist Markus Acher manages to sell lines like “We are satisfied/ From Monday to Friday and on Sunday we cry” through sheer alienated absence of affect. –Joshua Love”
February 9th, 2010 at 11:42 am (#)
Indie Shuffle’s contributors present their Essential Albums of Winter, Part One: http://bit.ly/bRzYmU
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February 12th, 2010 at 12:21 pm (#)
[...] gringo rico, taylor fife and camden andrews | published in playlists When we published Part One of this series, we had yet to live through the Snowpocalypse that engulfed DC. A few [...]