Looked over your shoulder recently? Biting the nails you’ve forgotten to clip? If you’re not anxious about work piling up or time passing by, you should be paranoid about the unprecedented weather. Why are there still leaves on the trees? Just yesterday, I thought I caught a whiff of spring. Dissonant and newfangled feelings call for music of the like. They also call for hope. Reflect with me in this playlist.
- Lush: “Nothing Natural”
November’s not too late to listen to Shoegaze titan Lush’s Spooky. “The sunlight always comes too soon,” Miki Berenyi laments. Maybe now she would revise: It leaves too late.
- Broadcast: “Black Cat”
Massaging the eardrums with guitar dissonance and crystalline vocals while you cower from (or in) the light is meditation. Warning: If you listen to this song, you may yourself become a black cat, omen of larger evils.
- Oneohtrix Point Never: “Chrome Country”
Slow down with these Playstation start-like sounds, bathe in the sonorant synth, vocal and keyboard. Climaxing in organ flourish, this song’s caressing tones may be the ones you desire to hear as you meet your end.
- Blue Öyster Cult: “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”
“Seasons don’t fear the reaper,” but maybe they should. For a careless application to climate change, this cowbell driven bop’s opening line rings heavier, “All our times have come.”
- The Chemical Brothers: “The Darkness That You Fear”
One thing that we may believe in is love, with the power to triumph over black cats, shattered mirrors and rising oceans. The Chemical Brothers employ this belief in cruising electronic horns and a score of vocalists.
- The Black Eyed Peas: “Anxiety”
Us too, Black Eyed Peas. But we trudge on.
- MGMT: “Little Dark Age”
MGMT’s 2018 album Little Dark Age is grim, to say the least. They call frequently on creeping echoes and word choice to make “the stereo sound strange.”
- Dawuna: “The General”
Dawuna’s description on Spotify calls the New York-based artist’s production “woozy yet intricate.” He almost whispers through my headphones on this song, stretching time through sound, as if to prolong the inevitable: his finale with a howling frequency, moist mouth sounds, as well as clicks and beeps reminiscent of a spaceship.
- M. Ward, First Aid Kit: “engine 5”
A friend first called this song out to me as “satisfying discord.” It illuminates an endless road trip into the sun.
- Jerry Garcia Band: “Cats Under the Stars”
Jerry had it right; this song is my only inevitable answer to any climate anxiety. Don’t fear death, don’t fear the dark: dance instead.
Aidan Goldberg is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at [email protected].