Favorite Winter Albums

Devendra Banhart - Cripple Crow

All of these records sound "wintery" to my ears, whatever that means!

Also: Joanna Newsom - Ys

scott walker - scott, scott 3, scott 4
rio baile funk

anything early by Bruce Cockburn (when he was an acoustic folkie) but High Winds, White Sky...Joy Will Find a Way, his first album....

> Bjork - Vespertine

for sure. i live in canada and this goes into heavy rotation right after daylight savings. nothing like listening to this on the way home from work when it's pitch black at 4:30 in the afternoon... "glacial beauty" is how i always describe it.

http://www.austinchronicle.com/binary/3cfdcd71/music_phases-15061.jpeg

residents - eskimo

The Who, Quadrophenia
Jimi Hendrix Experience, Electric Ladyland
Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures
PiL, The Metal Box
DJ Shadow, ...Endtroducing
Tricky, Maxinquaye
Ghostface Killah, Fishscale

These are all pretty standard Winter listening for me. But I'm sure there are many others I can't think of just now.

hmmm...

i dunno, i'll prolly break out some Kristin Hersh again soon. she's rich enough to go with some red wine or vodka in winter.

other than that i'm not sure. maybe Tori's Little Earthquakes.

oh and yea i agree re: Vespertine

richard & linda thompson - pour down like silver
robert ashley - automatic writing
nurse with wound - automating vol. 1
born heller - s/t
jandek - you walk alone
the dead c - harsh seventies reality
leonard cohen - songs of love & hate

Kate Bush, "The Kick Inside"
Lou Reed, "Berlin"
Pet Shop Boys, "Actually"
Elton John, "Elton John"
Ultravox, "Vienna"
The Beatles, "With The Beatles"
David Bowie, "Ziggy Stardust..."

Eternal Frost

David Sylvian - Secrets of the Beehive

The cold. The isolation. Its way too palpable - and sadly much too congruent to my own experience.

Jon Hassell - Fascinoma

Hear that? It's the ice crystals that are forming on the fragile membrane of my innermost being.

Antarctica - 81:03

Name says it all. There are times that I could swear that in the immediate space around me, no matter the season, I can see my breath when I play this thing.

Cousteau - Cousteau

Winter is Breaking
From Without and Within Me
A Frigid Peace Reigns

Do Make Say Think - Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn

OTM Vespertine This is my definitive winter album
Kanye West - Late Registration (Mostly when <1 inch of snow is on the ground)
The Dead Texan - The Dead Texan (Obligatory ambient music that somehow works best at night, in the winter)
Radiohead - Kid A (Rainy and 30 degrees kind of weather)
HEM - Rabbit Songs

Radiohead - Kid A.

(mostly because of the cover art, which looks like a snow-capped mountain)

anything early by Bruce Cockburn
YES, esp. 'high winds white sky'.

also:
cocteau twins, 'victorialand'
saint etienne, 'too young to die'
jane siberry, 'no borders here'

Galaxie 500 - On Fire

Speaking of On Fire..

Oh, and I nominate...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61F0H6YP2BL._SS500_.jpg

ok seriously the one album I most strongly associate w/winter is 17 Seconds by the Cure, the spare pristine haunted soundtrack of a sunny freezing first snowfall afternoon in december.

First Wiley album!

Yazoo - "Upstairs At Eric's"

Arab Strap - Philophobia. A hibernation album.

The Sally Shapiro album from last year.

Tom Waits - Franks Wild Years
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci - Gorky 5

cocteau twins, 'victorialand'

YES ^^

I tend to associate winter with albums I've bought in previous winters. I usually get more melancholy in the winter so I tend to feel more nostalgic about winter albums than the ones I get in the summer.

Winter albums:
The Glasgow School, Orange Juice
Title TK & Pod, The Breeders
The Woods, Sleater-Kinney
Goo, Sonic Youth

compilations:
Prisoners of Love, Yo La Tengo
Once In A Lifetime boxset, Talking Heads

Almost anything from Eluvium sounds perfect first thing in the morning during/after a howling snowstorm.

http://image.listen.com/img/170x170/3/6/7/4/904763_170x170.jpg
For some reason, rockabilly sounds better to me in the winter.

no one will admit to December by George Winston

Fennesz - Venice is a winter favorite. That and Morse by Alistair Galbraith.

I tend to associate winter with albums I've bought in previous winters. I usually get more melancholy in the winter so I tend to feel more nostalgic about winter albums than the ones I get in the summer.

So OTM.

Hendrix-Band of Gypsys

Recorded New Years Eve 1970. Seems I only put it on in winter.

Also, this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41F1T41688L._AA240_.jpg

Vespertine and Kid A OTM. These were some of the first albums that I identified as "winter albums." It helps that I bought them during the winter months.

Kompakt's Pop Ambient collections, too, I really associate those with winter. 2007's especially -- the best of the series, I think, at least of the ones I've heard -- it's just fantastic. I've hardly listened to it since March, because I've just been waiting for the bitter cold so I can sit in my warm apartment and look outside and listen to it. It's such a warm, hazy, atmospheric album, just kind of really healing stuff for a cold winter. Wow that all sounds really new age. Maybe I should just say George Winston's December. But really you all have to buy Pop Ambient 2007. 2008's is coming out soon, I'm excited.

I also tend to listen to a lot of Autechre during the winter. I think I rediscover how great Tri Repatae ++ is every December.

As it starts to get colder now, black metal's doing it for me this season - Leviathan, Burzum, Xasthur, Blut Aus Nord. Even Velvet Cacoon, they use these horribly shitty drum machine beats but everything is just layered in this melancholy wash of guitar fuzz. Cold, dark music.

Not sure what exact qualities I ascribe to "winter music", or what common attribute all my "winter albums" have, even though I definitely can say "oh that is one of my winter albums" with such confidence.

Then there's stuff like John Fahey, which for some reason has qualities that can make it spring music, summer music, autumn music, or winter music, each in very distinct ways.

winter is definitely my favorite season for most ambient music - though the kompakt style of ambient is usually more summer for me.

biosphere's dropsonde and substrata

dead texan (some of the piano reminds me of the music in the snowman which was always my favorite christmas movie as a kid) is another winter favorite

i think i tend to get into a lot of stuff with "cold" sounding production, too, like a lot of post-punk and 80s stuff. sometimes i go through little Fixx phases in the winter. i also like cocteau twins and dead can dance in the winter.

i also feel black metal and doom more in the fall and winter too. the new wolves in the throne room album will get tons of play in my house this fall.

sometimes i wish i lived in an area where it snows.

(also: in before someone pastes links to hundreds of earlier threads about this topic)

I second 'Songs of Love and Hate'. I've also been listening to lots of Blue Nile - Hats and Rooftops, though I do listen to these a lot anyway. Plus Pirates by Rickie Lee Jones, and The Party's Over by Talk Talk.

rockapads: I did a search for other winter-related music threads, and I couldn't find any; that's why I started this one. Completely possible I didn't search hard enough or for the correct search terms, but yeah.

Daytime winter listening: Stars of the Lid's The Refinement. . .

Nighttime winter listening: Dubstep, especially Burial's Untrue

I live in South Florida, mind you, so it isn't very cold here. Also, I never expected to like SOTL's disc, but it's perfect for cool, crisp morning walks. Both discs are very moving, in different ways.

i always liked to listen to dinosaur jr.'s "living all over me" record when it's raining outside.
a habit from my teenager years

side 2 of "i am sitting in a room"

coctails- s/t

Mary Margaret O'Hara, the second Palace and any Nick Drake.

So this isn't about the doom band then? damn.

transilvanian motherfucking hunger

John Cale-Paris 1919

basic channel BC:CD
rhythm & sound self titled

the odd thing about those is that they are just as much summer albums as winter albums.

depeche mode "violator"
aril brikha "deeparture in time"
massive attack "mezzanine"

John Cale-Paris 1919

Cosign * 1000.

esp.summer

sufjan stevens- michigan

Colin Newman's "Commercial Suicide" - it's so frigidly beautiful that it reminds me of snowflake crystals. I listen to it every year after the first snowfall.

monica queen 'return of the sacred heart'

any Nick Drake
not so sure about that. i'd say five leaves left is autumn, pink moon winter and bryter later spring.

gza-liquid swords

http://www.discogs.com/image/R-562902-1139674160.jpeg

piano magic - low birth weight

YES Dead Texan is winter awesome yeah. Whilst reading!

Boyz II Men - Legacy
Lame I know. This one is a newer "Winter" album for me. It used to be a "Friday Night" album (middle school dances, lock ins, pizza parties, etc.) but now is sounds like a pristinely produced Christmas album for some reason. I never gave it much credit until this Winter.

Mark Kozelek - Little Drummer Boy - Live this one and this one only in his catalog is winter to me, perhaps an example of buying an album in the winter and liking it only because of that time you bought it (as suggested above). Everything else of his is "Fall."

Blue by Joni Mitchell is my #1 winter album. It's practically a concept album about winter.

graeme jefferies 'messages from the cakekitchen'

For some reason, rockabilly sounds better to me in the winter.

they're both stripped-down like the desert

no one will admit to December by George Winston

except the mighty gabbneb

OTM about Vespertine. I started my review of it like this: How do you find a diamond in the snow? Walk barefoot until it cuts you. Retrace the bloodstained tracks to the source and you might find the subterranean Icelandic pixie-headquarters where it sounds like Björk has been hibernating and creating. With Vespertine (which means "of the evening"), Björk has created a bravely unfashionable nocturnal misfit dream.

Also:
Magazine - Secondhand Daylight

http://www.musicchannel.cc/images/152225,bild,0,0,284.jpg

Right now, with the exception of a few uptempto and/or bluesy songs, Sky Blue Sky is hitting the right spot for winter listening. It's sad and contemplative.

BARE TREES BY FLEETWOOD MAC

any Nick Drake
not so sure about that. i'd say five leaves left is autumn, pink moon winter and bryter later spring.

Pink Moon was my introduction to Drake so maybe that and the shroud/blanket shot on the cover of the box set clouds the judgment, but for me his music is so much about winter that at best his records are delusional about not being about winter.

Bryter Later is just as crisp and chilly as Pink Moon - "nobody knows how cold it feels" - but it's wrapped up in fantasy/reverie about spring. The city freeze is on, but could change at the chime of a city clock. Hazy Jane II gets all spritely and asks "What will happen in the morning" but the morning is not there yet, and when it gets there it will just be too cloudy to see.

I guess Five Leaves Left isn't as chilly as the other two, though the title (beside the rolling papers reference) makes me think of those trees in January that stubbornly pretend it's still late fall.

Digable Planets: Reachin' (A New Refation of Time and Space)
Digable Planets: Blowout Comb
Metallica: ... And Justice For All

All sound better the more the temperature drops. Maybe it's a nostalgia thing for me from the mid 90s.

A seminal bleak Funeral Doom masterpiece.

http://www.geocities.com/winter_warsmen/intodarkness.jpg

Meat Puppets - Up On The Sun

Best cure for SAD this side of a lightbox. If you're not thrown headfirst into summer while listening to this, there's something wrong with you.

(I hate winter, if you haven't guessed.)

Joni Mitchell's Blue - great any time of the year, but i listen to it much more in winter..

The new Burial really goes well with the cold wintery urban nights...

Devendra Banhart - Smokey . . .
Nick Drake - Pink Moon

Pink Moon reminds me of the twilight of a summer morning.

The new Trelldom, Til Minne, is a good wintry one - you can almost hear the arctic gales sweeping down through the fjords, or what have you.

I listen to Epic Soundtracks records mainly during the winter. They seem wintery to me. I tend to think about him a lot then. He was a very special artist for me and I miss him.

Also, I always mention this album but I love Maddy Prior's Year album and the winter-y part of that is just wonderful (as is the whole record). She also has some seasonal albums that are highly recommended (can't be assed as to the titles just at this moment but really really nice, especially if you have an actual need for holiday/seasonal music, you can't top it). I always bring them with me when i am stuck somewhere on Christmas, just so I don't get stuck listening to whatever other rubbish someone else has.

cold(-ish) in miami tonight. feels great. time to convert over to fall/winter music, e.g., burial; trust; veronica falls; skull disco; king midas sound; demdike stare; deadbeat; cowboy junkies (debut only); alejandra + aeron; the clientele.

others?

damn, i started this thread almost FOUR YEARS AGO

Devendra Banhart - Cripple Crow

― three handclaps, Saturday, November 17, 2007

well, i certainly hope you've grown wiser in the past four years.

guys i usually play George Winston's December once a year

http://kera-kids.org/files/2011/06/handclap-game.jpg

I guess for me it would be crowded house (and split enz). Been listening to them again

wow those are totally spring/summer artists for me. interesting.

Two of my favourite wintry songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XvZMR3DcHU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpoEkN7zl-U

http://i49.servimg.com/u/f49/11/99/74/41/winter10.jpg
just reissued again on southern lord this year too

Tom Waits - Franks Wild Years
Gorkys Zygotic Mynci - Gorky 5

i am currently doing the following and would recommend 100% -

light reading, hanging with cats on a couch, and listening to summoning's masterful 'oath bound'

wow those are totally spring/summer artists for me. interesting.

I guess, it should be. But the lyrics draw me in. in the summer I just want not to listen to words that much. Does that make any sense?

(Allso, I think it was also the fact that some crappy Belgian band covered Splint Enz' "Message to My Girl" so I dug up the recs again. lol

sipping coffee or whiskey also recommended

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHESjItTd-Q

hood's "cold house" once is gets frosty; "the cycle of days and seasons" up until then.

Does that make any sense?

of course!

all of these are highly personal assessments, not all of them are consistent, etc. for instance, burial is an all-time "winter artist" for me, but his 2011 disc -- street halo -- felt like something i'd rather play in the summer.

Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
The Cure - 17 Seconds

The Cure - Decembergration

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s21qWwaSkwY

alejandra + aeron

going to listen to these dudes rn

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 100% perfect choice!

I miss Summoning. It's been five year since their last album and it looks ever more likely we'll never see another record from messieurs Gregor & Lederer again.

if it's rainy and stormy i often go for some electric Miles or some old Chess blues or even some ecm.
if it's just plain cold it might be somethin' like
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000000YW3.01_SL75_.jpg

for some reason loveless is a winter album for me. it is deeply associated with a 50 km drive back from trier to luxembourg in february 1992 which took almost two hours. i came back from a carnival party at about two in the morning, where my girl-friend had left me. it was so foggy i couldn't drive faster than 30 km/h, i saw absolutely nothing except fog and there was loveless blasting from the speakers. maybe it saved my life because it prevented me from falling asleep. somehow i reached luxembourg in the early morning, sank into my bed and fell asleep immediately.

nobody mentioned hejira yet? actually for me it is a summer album as i heard it first on a hot summer afternoon but the cover suggests that for joni it seems to be more a winter album.

Gorky's Spanish Dance Troupe makes no sense to me at any other time of year. In the Winter it seems likes the best album ever made.