At the time of this writing, we are currently under a Wind Chill Advisory with wind chills as low as 35 below zero. As much as I like the occasional brisk walk from time to time, this is a different story altogether. SPOILER ALERT: I haven't been outside to walk this week yet.
The upside of this sub-zero weather drives me to "match" or "pair" it with a song or album that might "fit" the season to help cope in a small way with the inevitable onset of winter blues.
Thankfully, there are a number of albums that I've come across that distinctly remind me of winter in general or have a specific winter memory tied to it. The following are a few of my own picks. DISCLAIMER: most if not all of these entries are strictly subjective:
FIRST PICK:
Sigur Rós - Ágætis byrjun (roughly translates to Good Start) (1999)
The Icelandic quintet released Ágætis byrjun in 1999. As an album, the overall sound plays out as both a dreary landscape upon an expansive arctic tundra and an upward stargazing trudge through a large, icy forest in mid-winter. Even though the album has 10 complete tracks, the atmosphere as a whole is better enjoyed from start to finish, listening to the varying ebbs and flows of each track in sequence. A number of the tracks blend from one to another which would make it more difficult to listen to on shuffle.
Lead singer Jón Þór Birgisson (Jónsi)'s falsetto vocals are packed with plenty of reverb lending to the overall eerie and otherworldly sound of the album.
I had the ultimate experience of listening to this whole album on one of my lunch breaks, bundled up with sound cancelling headphones, sloughing through 6 inches of snow near a local school's soccer field.
SECOND PICK:
The Cars - The Cars (1978)
The Cars' self-titled debut from 1978 is only on this list because I happened to buy it in December in my mid-20s. Since then, it has been forever imprinted in my mind now as a chilly "winter album".
It's also one of my top 10 albums of all time. 99.9% of the songs are stellar. Only "I'm in Touch With Your World" drags slightly at times but doesn't bottom out the album before the other songs pick up the baton and keep the momentum going until the very end.
It's a cleanly produced album as well. Leader and principal songwriter, Ric Ocasek went on to lend his expertise to produce a number of albums after The Cars' demise, including Weezer's mid-90's self titled album Weezer [Blue Album] and Guided by Voices' 1999 album Do the Collapse.
THIRD PICK:
Björk - Medúlla (2004)
Yet another inhabitant of Iceland, Björk (born Björk Guðmundsdóttir) was lead singer of the short-lived Icelandic pop/rock group The Sugarcubes before starting a solo career with Debut in 1993. This however was her first solo album as an adult but she had already released a solo album as a child in 1977 at the young age of 11.
Björk was virtually unknown to me in the mid-90's and I had only heard "It's Oh So Quiet" on cassette tape by chance while driving with a friend on a mini road trip through the rolling hills of southwest Wisconsin.
Now in 2004, I happened to be reading online review recommendations of new albums for that year and I was seeing multiple mentions from music journalists about this vocal-based album Medúlla. My first assumption was that it was traditionally a cappella based but I was wrong.
I bought the CD sight unseen from an overflowing level of piqued curiosity, and queued it up in the DVD player attached to my brother's starter surround sound speakers.
More than once we both gave each other strange looks as we sat listening to the coos, clicks, breathy sighs, and deep inhales emanating around our heads in our modest San Diego apartment. It was strange to say the least but we were entranced! This took the basic template of a cappella, added as many vocal techniques as it could cram into a song, and pumped it with steroids. Björk truly meant it when she stated it was a vocals based album!
Throughout the songs on this album, she harnesses the full potential of the voice as a multifaceted musical instrument:
That percussion you hear? It's from the vocal cords of a beatboxer. That alien sound you hear landing in left field? A voice (of some sort). The only song to boast a non-vocal instrument, is the random keyboard within the song "Oceania".
The album caught my attention from the first track but was not immediately accessible to me until I played through it several times. Each time, I heard a different sound, a strange pitch, another barely audible whisper.
Readers: what are some albums that sound "wintery" to you? Leave your response in the comment section here. I’d love this to spark a discussion!
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