Early Winter Albums

I have been working on the follow up to my poetry collection, ‘The Rubble Before Us’, for about three years now. Rubble was written in an intense period of my life between 2016 and 2017, when everything felt like it was in flux – I was graduating high school, I had exited my first long term relationship and had started dating my future spouse, and I was struggling with becoming an adult and what that meant for me as everything I thought I knew about myself started coming into question.
Much of this happened when the days became shorter and the air became colder and the natural melancholy that comes with the late year season mixed with Seasonal Affective Disorder to create a distinct feeling that I will forever remember with that time in my life and that I feel is incapsulated by ‘The Rubble Before Us’ in a way that nothing else could – and I am forever grateful to have that relic, that time capsule to remind of me of who I was in that moment.

Music plays a big role in a lot of this. Certain albums match emotions and seasons and times in my life and when I listen back to them, it’s like it allows me to relive a little bit of whatever I was feeling then – for better or for worse. This season in particular, as someone with SAD, has quite a few albums associated with it. And when writing this new collection that is meant to represent the next steps that comes after ‘Rubble’, it felt important to go back and listen the music that represented the before in addition to the music that I listened to after.
These are five albums that mean a lot to me in a lot of different ways – but also encapsulate this season in a way that, once again, is hard to put into words. These albums feel like this time of year to me – like November/December, like silent air and the scent of dried leaves. Days with a sun constantly at dusk. A chill that seems impossible to shake – but it feels so familiar to you that you almost don’t want it to go away.

These albums aren’t necessarily ‘Autumn/Winter’ albums and you may not feel the same way about them that I do – they may mean something entirely different and that’s what I love about it. A well loved album is a time capsule full of emotions entirely unique to whoever may be listening to it.
These are my top five for the season.

Number 5: My Head is an Animal – Of Monsters and Men

This album came into my life around the time of its North American release in 2012, when the single ‘Little Talks’ exploded on the radio. I enjoyed the song, but I had recently been broken up with and little old Freshman me, blaring Secondhand Serenade and Blink-182’s ‘I Miss You’ to grieve, found ‘Little Talks’ to be incredibly sad to the point of refusing to listen to it.
As I moved on, however, I made myself listen to the album – at first skipping that single song – to eventually falling in love with the record and the slow, folksy, dreamlike nature of its tracks. This was, as far as I can remember, the first album to pull me away from the pop-punk and alternative rock that I mostly listened to prior, and brought me into a different world. The album is beautiful, at times haunting, and still my favorite from their discography.

Number 4: Nocturne – Wild Nothing

Nocturne is a feeling. It is a place in time. This album, more than any other, puts me in a very specific time in my life in late 2016 – and I can’t shake that, no matter how many times I listen to it.
I’ll be honest – I can’t tell you much about the individual songs, and I haven’t listened to anything else by the band. Nocturne feels like a complete piece that asks to you to put distractions elsewhere and let yourself be submerged for a while.
This may come across terrible, but I promise I mean it in a good way and I hope you know what I mean – this album feels like you’re drowning… but you’re completely at peace with it – and you just know there is something waiting for you on the other side.

Number 3: Woodland EP/States – The Paper Kites

Tied for third place is the first EP and debut album from The Paper Kites. Woodland is an incredible piece of folk rock that manages to do so much story telling across its 25 minute run time and 6 tracks that I become damn near transfixed. The track ‘Bloom’, which happens to be one of their most popular despite it simply being listed as a ‘bonus track’, was the first song I was exposed to – courtesy of my girlfriend at the time – and years later, I happened across the EP without releasing that Bloom was a part of it. I remember falling in love with the first five tracks and being so surprised when Bloom came next – as if I was being connected with a part of myself I thought I forgot.
States can only be described as melancholic beauty. That Winter, I would listen to it as I fell asleep, as it does an incredible job of lulling you into a state of comfort and peace and offering beautiful dreams when the outside world wasn’t a place I particularly wanted to be.

Number 2: Lonesome Dreams – Lord Huron

Lord Huron’s fourth album, Long Lost, came out this year and is a viable candidate for my favorite album of the year. I’ve listened to them off and on throughout the years – but my favorites are still their first and their latest.
Lonesome Dreams is their debut album – a wide open, sprawling spectacle that, whenever I turn it on, helps transform my head space into something better than it was before. It feels like an adventure, like stories to be told, and it’s excellent for when I need to bring myself together plant my feet on the ground. It’s folk rock at its core, but the sensation that you’re about to go on a journey – a journey that is very grounded and human and personal – it always brings me back around to wherever I need to be.
Not to mention it does my favorite little thing that some albums do but having the last few moments of the final song bring you back to the beginning of the opening song – making you feel that you’ve had this grand adventure and you’re back home – ready to do it all over again.

Number 1: Leaves in the River – Sea Wolf

I have so much to say about this album yet I find it hard to let any of it out. This album feels intensely personal, and as the years have gone by since I first heard it – not only does it take my top spot here, I think it is my favorite album of all time.
I can turn on this album anytime. Listen to it all the way through. Feel just a little shiver of the memories attached to it run down my spine and remind myself of how far I’ve come and how much I’ve changed.

Leaves in the River is an intimate journey. From the eponymous opening track – where, through the sound of gentle rain, the narrator begins to sing you a story about a girl he met on Halloween and the short night they shared, walking through the neighborhood and eventually ending up at her childhood house – to ‘The Rose Captain’, which feels achingly nostalgic; pining for a love who may or may not be present any longer – to the closing track, ‘Neutral Ground’, which in contrast to the previous track ‘The Cold, The Dark, and The Silence’, is starkly stripped back and quiet; sung directly to the subject of his affection, its numerous references to the nature surrounding them and the question – “We lay and we wonder when will I come around?” – it feels like a goodbye, as if the narrator is trying to bring himself to admit that the one he loves is no longer there any more.

Perhaps I read far too into it – perhaps it’s simply a beautiful, quiet collection of songs and I’m creating a narrative where there isn’t one – but Leaves in the River has stuck with me for years. It’s beautiful in the Winter, and it’s beautiful in the Spring , and it’s a lovely, short album that I can put on at anytime and be whisked away into my memories.
And every time I listen to it – it just brings me back to a cold December when I first listened to it – and it swells my heart and clings to my bones and brings with it a wistful nostalgia for the years that have passed and a longing for the days that have yet to come.

And that’s it. As I finish writing this, on the 28th of December – it’s about 80 degrees here in Texas. It doesn’t feel like Winter. I lose hours of sunlight and I don’t even get cool weather to make up for it.
But these albums bring the season to me, even if the world doesn’t quite reflect it. I have a love/hate relationship with this time of the year – and they make everything slightly better.

Hope you’re well.

– Brandon