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Four Seasons

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Inspired by a comment about Talk Talk’s Colour Of Spring, I find it — cheap irony alert! — all brown and misty and redolent of autumn for some reason. Don’t you find some records just embody a particular part of the year?

I am not talking about Christmas records here, just one that you reach for on the first warm day of spring, or maybe when you find yourself putting on an extra layer when the leaves start turning orange. Alternatively, there are those records that immediately put you in mind of a certain season, whatever time of year you hear them, in a similar fashion to one of those pastries Proust bangs on about.

I think we have a wide enough spectrum of tastes to avoid the “Summer? Let’s slap on the Beach Boys Endless Summer!” option, don’t we? But if it genuinely signifies summer for you, well, just provide a hipper less civilian alternative…

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Comments

  1. Mine:
    Summer is Stevie Wonder, Songs In The Key Of Life. Bought with my Saturday job pay and carried home on a blazing September day

    Talk Talk – as above, feels like October

    Joy Division – Closer. Just winter, winter, winter. Probably because I associate it with the 12″ of Atmosphere with the snowy cover released at around the same time (although Wikipedia tells me it was released in May. That can’t be right). The doomy feel just says “stay indoors, it’s cold out” to me.

  2. Genesis’ Wind and Wuthering is an autumn record, which I think is down to the keyboard sounds; whatever Banks was using sounds warm; warm like coming indoors after a cold but sunny walk.

  3. I think about this more than I’d care to admit. Some records really do just gain an extra life when played at the appropriate time of year.

    Automatic For The People, for example, is an Autumn record. November, specifically. I think it’s the combination of Drive and Sweetness Follows, both of which are about as November as it gets. Also in this bracket are Nikes by Frank Ocean and Mystery of Love by Sufjan Stevens, both of which sound at their best on a cold, dark evening under bright lights.

    Folklore by Taylor Swift, despite having a song entitled “August” on it, is an October album. The lengthening shadows and darkening evenings, the slight nip in the air. Probably unsurprising, as For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver is also an October record. So, in unrelated news, is Philadelphia by Neil Young – although that might just be a sense memory of watching the titular movie at that time of year and receiving the song as a dagger to the heart.

    Everything ever recorded by Agnes Obel occurs in January. Probably somewhere out in an unheated log cabin in the darkest part of the woods, beside a frozen lake. These are just the facts, I’m afraid.

    There are about a million Summertime records. Many of them feature the actual word “Summertime” in the title or lyric, and were, I suspect, written with a Summer audience in mind.

    There are a similar number of Autumn records, they’re just a tiny bit less intentional. They’re usually a bit folky and combine the gentle morbidity of a failing relationship with the warmth of an open fireplace.

    Maybe the best of the lot is the immortal and peerless All Too Well (10 Minute Version), which explicitly charts the passage of a love affair from Autumn (“Autumn leaves falling down, like pieces into place) into Winter (“I still remember the first fall of snow”) and then on to recriminatory oblivion .

    • Yeah, evoking summertime is just a bit too easy, isn’t it? We’re just naturally more open to an optimistic upbeat song when the sun is heating the bones, I guess. Doing the opposite (vide Atmosphere, above) is a harder trick to pull off.

    • I think Aventine is Autumnal, specifically auburn and gold. I agree that Philharmonics is glacial and as delicate as a snowflake and Myopia is long, introspective, moonlit night. Citizens Of Glass heralds a Spring, representing a kind of the and a broadening of horizons.

  4. Getz/Gilberto is an obvious summer record.
    Close my eyes and I’m on the beach in Rio, with a long cool drink, watching the girls, trying not to leer.

  5. There’s only one album like this for me.

    At the right point in the autumn, on the walk home from work, I put on Out Of Season by Beth Gibbons/Rustin Man. Annual ritual ever since it came out.

    It’s like a soundtrack to the season.

  6. Summer would be It’s A Beautiful Day for me, first two albums. Winter, almost anything by the Incredible String Band – music to listen to while you watch a log fire.

    (Jolly decent post, Mo! Surprisingly … sensitive.)

  7. I can’t think of specific albums I graduate towards, but:

    Spring always puts me in a mood for beat-based music. Funk, soul, and funky soulful hip-hop.

    Autumn, and into Winter, always sends me into slower, more hushed and contemplative sounds. Acoustic stuff, instrumental stuff.

  8. Here goes:

    Haircut 100 – Love Plus One. We were given a lift home after a party, the weather was warm, everyone was intoxicated including the driver probably. It was the 80s. This song was playing. It’s a summer record, a summer era.

    The Kinks – Days. The Kinks often have an autumnal vibe (no shit), wistful and reflective.

    Winner Takes It All – bleak, cold, but there’s a humanity and there’s beauty

    I Feel Love – spring is here, the juices are flowing, oh yes!

  9. XTC’s Skylarking sort of runs from spring to winter through the course of the record, excluding the excreable Dear God if present.

    Imagined Village’s first is mainly late-spring/early summer.

    Shrift’s Lost In A Moment has a very hazy summer day feel throughout; slight breeze coming off the sea, as you sit and contemplate if its too early in the day for an ice cream

    • Skylarking was the first album that came to mind, but entirely as a summer album – Summers’s Cauldron obvs, but also all that flattened grass and even the umbrellas are protecting from summer showers.

      Elsewhere, Fripp’s League of Crafty Guitarists could only be autumnal.

  10. How about with just one artist?

    I’ll try Kate Bush…

    Spring : Aerial (specifically the Sky Of Honey suite on disc 2) is very much about a day in spring, with its bird sounds etc etc

    Summer: a little trickier – I would probably go with The Red Shoes – the upbeat Rubberband Girl, Eat The Music etc etc

    Autumn: The Sensual World – especially the title track

    Winter: The easy one- 50 Words For Snow, obviously.

  14. For some reason The Clientele are an Autumn band for me.

    And Nick Drake’s Northern Sky has a similar effect.

    And finally, Fleet Foxes.

    A vein of melancholy runs through each I guess.

  15. Trojan ska is the sound of summer for me probably because I spent many of my London years around Ladbroke Grove and Portobello.

    River Man and other Nick Drake tunes have an autumnal feel to me.

    Winter is the rather obvious Walk Out to Winter by Aztec Camera.

    The best I can do for Spring is either the warm chord swells of Answered Prayers by David Sylvian or, for some reason World Party’s take on All I Really Want to Do, maybe because it’s so overwhelmingly optimistic sounding.

  17. I was trying to come up with a Spring tune but it’s the most elusive feeling to capture, it seems. Mrs E used to live in Paris and came up with this one, and in French too:

  18. I suppose L’Apocalypyse des Animaux by Vangelis has an autumn/winter vibe. It’s perfect for a rainy Sunday under a heavy Normandy sky, gazing out into the gloom, lamenting the end of something.

  22. Sibelius 4th symphony – arctic winter
    Sibelius 2nd – spring
    Sibelius 6th – autumn
    Can’t think of any summery Sibelius…

    On the other hand –

    Mahler 1st – verdant spring, right down to the cows in the pasture
    Mahler 5th – hazy summer
    Mahler 7th – crepuscular autumn
    Can’t think of any proper wintery Mahler…

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