Enter the month of February, and with that, the next phase of the seemingly murderous Ithaca winter. Ice paves the path up the slope, the sun sits low in the sky and snowflakes dot my phone as I hastily scroll through my Spotify queue.
For some, a change in scenery means a change of tune. For example, I violently overplayed “See You Again” by Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth on the day of my high school graduation, and I queued up “Sprinter” by Dave and Central Cee every Saturday night for the two hours it took me to fold all of my laundry and make my bed.
Yet I’ve never quite understood the hype behind “seasonal” music — that is, playing Mariah Carey before Christmas or that trend where artists ask, “Did I just make the song of the summer?!” It never made sense to me. If a song is truly beloved, why would it only be listened to over a socially constructed period of months? I held this belief strongly until I discovered wave to earth. Now, I don’t know what it is, but I can only listen to this band when the temperature is below freezing. So I guess Cornell really came in clutch with that one.
An indie rock band based in Seoul, wave to earth uses elements of lofi and jazz to paint vivid pictures of nature, longing, pain and essentially everything that will ruin your day. The band’s name comes from their wish to create a new wave of music with their distinct voice, vivid vocals and slow instrumentals. If you’re looking for a new way to hurt yourself before Valentine’s Day, wave to earth’s discography will do the trick.
Seeing as this song was the band’s debut, it’s only fitting that I kick off this list with “wave,” a glittery, electronic and shoegaze-y track with heavy themes of love, doom (the best combination!) and escapism. It makes me think of a bedazzled camera shutter, shuffling through a blur of memories. Listen to this if you want to vividly hallucinate everything you thought you moved on from, from your unrequited feelings to that really mortifying time you spilled egg drop soup all over your hands in Okenshields and had to run to Cornell Health. Or, if you’re more on that anime protagonist-type-beat, take someone’s window seat in class, dye your hair blue for added effect, discreetly adorn your AirPods and let yourself imagine you’re on a plane to the Bahamas rather than in the middle of the third blizzard of the week.
Moving forward, “bonfire” is straightforward and floaty, carrying that implicit quality of hopelessness that wave to earth nails every single time. The instrumental is ethereal, paired with an upbeat tone and dreamlike vocals. Listen to this whilst basking in the fleeting pockets of sunlight before your 10 a.m., crunching snow beneath your feet, and you’ll feel like you’re walking on clouds. The song is incredibly versatile. One part of it sounds like a lullaby, another like the epic conclusion to your favorite musical. Think keshi meets Clairo meets the composer of an overly dramatic coming-of-age movie. Sprinkle a little bit of Jojiin there, Salt Bae style, and you get a close enough reference point.
Reader, allow me to pose a question. Are you homesick? Or are you insane? “homesick” is the sort of song that you listen to for a night walk down the arts quad or for lying on the ground of an empty conference room in Olin, staring at the ceiling, contemplating why you put off that essay until the due date. The point is: You have to be able to imagine yourself drowning in a dark void. You’ll feel better afterward. I’m kidding, you won’t. You never will.
Ever wondered what falling in love feels like? For the sake of hypotheticals, let’s say that we’re all emotionless vessels. Reader, I want you to drop everything you’re doing and just listen to the first 33 seconds of “love.” That is all I’m going to say for this one. It captures something that’s genuinely impossible for the best writer to actualize, so I won’t even try.
Do you want to feel like your innards are being slowly ripped out from your chest? Do you want to feel emotion so strongly that you find yourself wishing you were in the emotionless vessel minority? Congratulations, “seasons” is the perfect track for you. I wrote this article intending to hurt my fellow Cornell students, and this one will definitely get you if the other ones haven’t. Why? It’s about acceptance. Gross, right? Rewind! Take me back to the previous stages of grief, now! No, thank you!
This track achieves something I feel like no other artist can, making it wave to earth’s magnum opus. I’ll die on that hill, right next to Frank Ocean, for all I care.
Although relatively new to the soft rock scene, wave to earthexcels in creating insightful music and developing a unique sound. I hope that these tracks move you in some way.
Leah Badawi is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at lb779@cornell.edu.
