The typical yearning for warmth at this time of year seeps into the bastions of our emotion; there is no doubt that the spring stirs us. We are creatures of our environment; as the new season fastens itself forth, you might be feeling a concurrent internal shift. The best way to absorb these motions might be a walk in the woods, but if you’re clinging to the seasonal blues and need some audio-therapy, plug in and space out to Equinox Melancholia.
1. Abby Sage: Nobody Move
A calm gleam of wind weaves your hair around you, now warm enough to walk or skip at night without freezing. Put your earbuds in and defy this song’s title — it's punch-packed in an energetic drone, potent enough to hypnotize you through this season.
2. my bloody valentine: new you
There lies a call in the rising gales of the past week. As the spring enlivens leaves from the tree’s buds, you too can change yourself with the weather. Belinda Butler’s airy voice dizzies in time’s rush, anxious of the way things may evolve. Don’t anticipate the warmer weather, be with the spectacle of the season’s moment.
3. Kurt Vile: Dandelions
Shimmering in a hopeful sorrow with the memory of cycles past, Vile’s lackadaisical drawl and loose lyrics hearten the manner in which we should approach this season’s arrival. “Anything over rage,” he repeats amidst the acoustic twang and electric titillation. Here’s your sign to pick emergent flora for your friends.
4. Neko Case: This Tornado Loves You
Blasphemy! A bump that bursts through its own gate before its race has even lined up, spinning in a proclamation of desire, whirling in vast imaginations of the space that love holds. Change has its chaos in human emotion — “believe” Ms. Case as she belts about the capacious opportunity for transformation.
5. Tanya Davis: The Web
Poet-Singer Songwriter Davis encompasses brightness in her exploration of entanglement. Typical of her style, the lyrics chase a circular guitar melody, tracking our interconnectedness. Exhalations punctuate the energetic last 40 seconds of the song, worthy of a raindance or a sunshower boogie.
6. Charlotte Cornfield: Audience of One
The Aural Utopia has arrived. Our ability to infinitely curate our soundscape allows us any sonic emotional experience we desire. You may become your only audience, as Cornfield depicts with her slow, minor piano and lamenting voice.
7. The Staves: Chicago
"I made a lot of mistakes." How many of us feel as the semester closes in on its end, and better we are for it. The harmonizing sisters' cover of this midwestern classic hearkens west instead of east.
8. Mutual Benefit: Remembering a Dream
Bathe in the pillowy piano of a meditative selection from Growing at the Edges, an album worth its length. My friend shared it with me just in time for spring reflections and mental maintenance, perhaps best achieved through the subconscious.
9. James Krivchenia: Now I Walk In Beauty
Take your headphones out and go for a walk, enjoy the new warmth for your own sake! Or keep yourself plugged, and listen to Big Thief drummer Krivchenia’s production which sounds like the hologram of a bubbling creek in the sunlight.
10. Coco: Empty Beach
Meandering and mourning, this song regrets that the beaches are still too cold to sunbathe on. “All of our love is gone / Like a wave that falls on an empty beach.” The beloved East Shore park beckons below the hill.
11. Röyksopp: Senior Living
Childhood friends, the Norwegian electro-duo have a great sense of the approach of the sun, with their grounding in the Arctic Circle, as they hail from Tromsø. Believe in their slow build; their short summers taught them how warmth grows as it does in their sparse yet emotive guitar and sneaking bass, this seasonal suspense inherent in their pursuit of endings.
https://open.spotify.com/playl...
Aidan Goldberg is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at ag2494@cornell.edu.
‘Solar Flare’ is a weekly playlist column where Sun contributors spotlight a slice of musical taste with the campus community. It runs every Monday.
