Music for spring
Pairing an album to a season is mostly subjective. It usually requires (at least for me) the reminiscences of past seasons. I don’t see it entirely like that, though. The music must actually be bright, vivid, or airy to feel spring-y. An apocalypse-sounding, mutant cyborg avant-pop whatever album will not make it. Here are 8 that I really like.
Mother Earth's Plantasia by Mort Garson
This is the spring album. To quote the top comment on YouTube: ‘[It] puts the synthesize in photosynthesize’. The music is composed specifically for plants to listen to and help them grow. The answer on how it would achieve this is more New Age than scientific. Here’s an excerpt of the Pitchfork review, and I recommend reading it to learn more of the weird background of the record:
The idea came from a 1973 book The Secret Life of Plants, written by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird and containing some hilariously specious claims: Plants can communicate telepathically, they can identify pain in others, they carry ancient wisdom in their little green cells, and they love music.
It is a conceptual album, but it does sound joyful. It reminds me of some lost soundtrack to a Ghibli film, or a sci-fi nature film animated to the album (as Interstella 5555 is to Daft Punk's Discovery).
→ Listen here
The Reminder by Feist
The Reminder is the reason I decided to write this post. March came and I thought—time to listen to Feist. Can’t really pinpoint why it sounds so spring-y to me. I was 13 when it was released in 2007 and I remember watching the wonderful video for ‘1234’. Years later I got really into Broken Social Scene, and by proxy to Feist, who is part of the group. My old last.fm account shows that between 2012-2014, each year from March to June, I scrobbled a lot of The Reminder. Maybe it is nostalgia; I was younger, the days had a different flow. But nonetheless the album is a great one to put you in a good mood. Feist has an effortless voice. There is a lot of sparkles—xylophones and whatnot. A lot of claps, finger snaps, dips and bursts. And I think it helps the spring-yness that the first demos for the album were recorded in early March and released in April the next year. Either way, not being able to pinpoint why I love this album probably means there’s more than just my mind playing a part.
CHAI by CHAI
CHAI would be the ones to organise the first picnic of the season. It would be the hottest and sunniest day of spring, and an absolute blast. They had an amazing run of 4 albums between 2017 and 2024. I found out about them just before the release of CHAI, which was their last before breaking up. If I must be conservative, I will describe them as a pop act. But in their music there’s rock, R&B, funk and, as they sing on their debut, Pink, some “hi hi hip-hop rap time”.
Here’s a song about having their tour trailer stolen in the US and still playing all their shows—thanks to “the support and generosity of other people”. →'Surprise': Not exactly part of the album, but it is, in my opinion, the first child of it. I have listened to it hundreds of times. I think it was my top song in Apple Music Replay in 2022. Still not tired of it.
Ys by Joanna Newsom
On a day in mid-to-late March, you go on a walk to do something mundane. And you look around—nothing is the same! A few days ago it was all bare, and now you can’t get used to how much there is of everything. A spring of baroque beauty. That is this album.
→ Listen here
0 by Ichiko Aoba
Airy, breezy and soft. A gush of warm wind in April. Literally. Field recordings are incorporated throughout the whole album. It “feels” like being outside. '0' is the blueprint for much of the ambient acoustic music we hear these days—in sound, mostly. You can hear many snippets of it on TikTok. Though, it doesn’t do justice to hear just a minute of her songs. Ichiko Aoba is a wonderful landscaper, and I recommend listening to the album from start to finish.
→ Listen here
Bloom by Beach House
No reason to meander and describe the monumental beauty of this album.
→ Listen here
songs by Adrianne Lenker
If I have to say where in spring this album fits, it would be in the early, chilly days. It is a raw sound, sprinkled with bird songs, sound dips, soft vocals. ‘come’ begins with light rainfall on leaves, and leads you into a tender scene of a dying woman. She has a talent for entwining the mundane and ethereal. On ‘ingydar’ she sings: ‘Early еvening, the pink ring swallows / The sphеrical marigold terrain / Sleepily, Venus sinks and hollows / The stationed headlight of a plane’. There is heartbreak, or longing, in every song. But the chords are lush, and the scenery vivid. And even though it is an album that gets heavier with every listen, the warmth is there.
→ Listen here
Father of the Bride by Vampire Weekend
‘Father of the Bride’ is a late spring, warmer weather album. It’s witty and lighthearted, a good warmup before the summer. It puts a huge emphasis on nature, and Earth, being an obvious centre on the cover. The video for ‘Harmony Hall’ is all bugs and flowers. ‘This Life’ is cells and microorganisms diving and dancing around. ‘Big Blue’ is all fishes, one of them taking the bite. Most of all, it sounds cool. (And they’re amazing live.) Like every Vampire Weekend album though, it is the perspective of an urban guy—a spring in the city.