01. Badly Drawn Boy - I love NYE
It’s an instrumental piece with acoustic guitar and strings to put you in this warm cocoon. And the bells all along the song keep the magic atmosphere of a wintery day. The end of the song is a real culmination, with the sun finally coming out and shining through your window.
A nice way to start the compilation, gently setting the winter atmosphere.
02. Syd Matters – My lover’s on the pier
The song starts as basic folk song with a soft voice and an acoustic guitar but slowly you’re taken somewhere else, like elevated in the air. Then the glockenspiel comes in and the fairy voices, seeing these beautiful landscapes from above, surrounded by white-snow elves.
03. Belle and Sebastian – The fox in the snow
Right away you will picture that fox lost outside in the snow. It’s freezing cold, and it is pointlessly wandering when there is no food for it. No person for the girl to talk to, no destination for the kid on the bike. What else would you do than playing in the snow when you’re a kid?
There is a pinch of melancholia in this song, as it is often the case during winter months, lonely animal or people in the cold and empty landscape.
04. Musée Mecanique – Like Home
You can hear the cold wind blowing in that song, probably inspired by the rough weather of their hometown Portland, this feels like home. Wandering through the streets swept by the rain, carrying the burden of hope on your shoulder.
05. Perry Blake – 1971
Hadn’t listened to that song in years, that was one the good thing in preparing this compilation, re-discovering gems from the past. Perry Blake now seems like a forgotten poet to me. You will easily find this winter feeling with that songs, it really has some good ingredients to trigger that winter vision in you.
06. Mew – 156
Danish band Mew shows with 156 that you can easily create a winter feeling while playing uptempo rock. The cold wind keeps blowing along the song, uninterrupted by the warmer guitar and voice. “I can hear the wind whispering your name”.
07. Peter Von Poehl - The Story Of The Impossible
http://teardrum.wordpress.com/2007/10/26/peter-von-poehl-the-story-of-the-impossible/
08. Mum – Blai hnotturinn intro
09. Mercury Rev – Endlessly
This is the song I immediately thought of when the idea of “Winter feeling” came. It has almost all ingredients of the perfect “Winter feeling” song. Bowed saw, Hammond organ, Harpsichord and other instruments from another time to create such a timeless tune.
There are songs that just evoke a specific landscape as soon as chimes the first seconds of the song.
Endlessly is a winter lullaby, celestial and melancholic. You immediately picture these oneiric landscapes, with snow-covered trees, a blowing blizzard and maybe some lights on a Christmas tree.
10. Loney, Dear – I Love You (In With The Arms)
feels like wrapping yourself in the coat of the night
Suggesting the song has been written on a cold winter evening by a candlelight.
You could almost feel the breath of in your neck, spine-shivering words
11. The Album Leaf – Streamside
12. Thomas Dybdahl - No one would ever know
Thomas Dybdahl with “No one would ever know” is one of these artists that manages to recreate the place that inspired the song, listen to Thomas Dybdahl and you lose yourself in the snowy mountains of central Norway, diving into an ice-covered fjord. And again these female voices to accentuate the feeling of being somewhere else, an imaginary land.
13. Kings of Convenience – 24-25
A warm finger picking tune, There is fire in the chimney, your Hi-Fi is your chimney. The two superimposed voices bring you that warm feeling necessary to survive any long-lasting Scandinavian winter.
14. Mikael Simpson – Se det ske..
A shy and shivering voice accompanying the slow guitar and keyboard in the background, an harmonica
It must be dark and wet in Nørrebro, the walk is slow and this songs makes you appreciate the sweetness of the darkness.
15. Sigur Ros – Sæglópur
A winter as long as it can get, icy, dark and cold. Welcome to Iceland.
It starts with gentle snow and downtempo piano melody but then the wind starts blowing, stronger and stronger. All the elements seem uncontrollable, a firework of guitars and drums. But then it’s passing by, the storm is soon over, all what is left are deserted snowy meadows.
16. Archive – Nothing Else
17. 2 Von Millionen Von Sternen
Cloud-free sky in that cold winter night. Starring at the celestial vault and its millions of stars.
Two of them seem to be shining more than the others, that is us, that was us.
We were two out of millions of starts, that always got more and more apart.
18. Portishead – Undenied
I hesitated before including this song on this compilation. To say the least this song is a tad melancholic, maybe not so much “Winter feeling”. But melancholia can be a part of winter and this song makes me feel like wrapping myself in the dark and safe coat of the night.
The softly spoken voice, the well-chosen samples, the essence of trip hop in one song.
Before the winter withdraws for this year I thought I would make a winter-inspired compilation. Some songs seem somehow more appropriate for this season, they manage to reflect how we feel at that time of the year and also describe how winter can musically be embodied.
Here comes the third and last part about the sounds of Australia.
Brazil is calling, time for a new compilation!
