By Jack Fry
I wait on springtime with bated breath. Like leaves on a vine, I desperately seek out any creeping sunlight. I really do feel reborn as the weather changes and my levels of vitamin D rise. To many, the first true sign of spring is when the blossom appears; I returned home from Durham last week to find the magnolia tree at the bottom of my garden had bloomed a brilliant white. Spring to me is the first time you tentatively hang your sheets on the washing line, a toasted hot cross bun slathered in salty butter, rain that glimmers as it refracts the pale sunlight, the first freshly cut lawn, a thawing of creaking winter bones. Someone wisely suggested to me recently that spring was a better time for New Year’s resolutions and I always feel a reinvigorated sense of purpose at this point in the year; spring is often associated with renewal, awakening, and growth. The season is transitional and fleeting, a bridge between extremes. I feel each song included is a call to recognise not the sublime, but those smaller moments that occur in between, a moment where a beam of light just breaks through the clouds or the unfurling of a leaf, blink and you’ll miss them and summer will be upon us. So with all this in mind, I’ve curated this seasonally-themed playlist.
Light of a Clear Blue Morning – Waxahatchee
This Waxahatchee cover of a timeless classic by Dolly Parton, and the album it’s included on St Cloud, feels incredibly emblematic of spring to me. The album, full of songs of renewal and hope, was written following a period when Crutchfield had embarked on a new love affair and had chosen to get sober, observing the world with an intense lucidity. Crutchfield sings in the first verse, a line I think we are all too familiar with after a winter spent in Durham:
“I’ve been looking for the sunshine
You know I ain’t seen it in so long”
With the spring equinox having just passed, the daylight hours now outnumber the dark. And so when Crutchfield’s glassy voice cuts through the grey clouds, she embodies the communal sense of hope that comes with a blue sky day, singing: “Everything’s gonna be alright, It’s gonna be okay”.
Morning has Broken – Yusuf/Cat Stevens
I just managed to catch Cat Stevens’ Legends slot while working at Glastonbury last year and his presence, especially whilst performing this song, brought about a tangible serenity amongst the crowd. This song will always be reminiscent of this time of year for me; when I was growing up it was always sung on Easter Sunday at church. It feels like a companion song to the ‘Light of a Clear Blue Morning’ – one is an actual hymn and the other is a hymn-like tribute to the renewing power of the morning.
Little Green – Joni Mitchell
To celebrate the return of Joni Mitchell’s catalogue to Spotify, listen to this moving and deeply vulnerable ode to the child she gave up for adoption whilst at art school, with lovely lyrics capturing the season:
“Just a little Green
Like the colour when the spring is born
There’ll be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow”
New Jade – Caribou
One of my favourite electronic musicians, Dan Snaith makes music under the moniker Caribou. This song from his most recent album evokes the vivid greens of spring with its title. The lyrics referencing new beginnings, stabs of drums throughout and slightly psychedelic production make for a propulsive and joyful springtime listen.
“It’s like a new first kiss
Yeah, you can start feeling glad
We’ve been waiting for so long
And now he’s finally gone”
Deeper Well – Kacey Musgraves
In this cut from her new album, Musgraves sings of some emotional spring cleaning, where she dispatches some bad habits and unhealthy people from her life and in return draws from a richer spiritual source.
Wash. – Bon Iver
Whilst this title I believe refers to a place, Washington State, I was always under the impression it actually referred to the act of washing. For me, the piano motif sounds like the steady drip of melting ice or raindrops post-April shower. It sounds like a seasonal cleansing, washing away the woes of winter for a fresh start.
Go Do – Jonsi
To me, this song truly captures the energy of spring, an urgent life force compelling us forward. The glitching of the sonics at the beginning resembles the natural world stuttering back to life, a bird beating the water off its wings, a bud breaking through the earth. Whilst I generally don’t like being told what to do, this song can be the exception to the rule, its thumping drums could make even the most sluggish seize the day.
April Come She Will – Simon and Garfunkel
The most obvious choice of the playlist doesn’t particularly need explaining.
The Foggy Dew – Ye Vagabonds
Earlier this week I went for a walk to watch the sunrise and returned with my boots sodden by the dew, no longer frost. This achingly gorgeous Irish folk sung by a brother duo in lilting harmony is a recent find and one I have on repeat.
Four Seasons In One Day – Crowded House
British weather is unpredictable even in summer, but springtime is when it’s at its most fickle, when the climate assumes a rather fluid identity, giving us warmth, chill, and downpours sometimes all in a matter of minutes. As I write this the sun has offered a brief interlude to an afternoon of torrential rain, hail and gusts of wind that knock the breath out of you. Thus this single from the Australasian band’s album, Woodface, seemed rather apt.
Cattails – Big Thief
Adrienne Lenker, the frontwoman of Big Thief, is in my opinion a songwriter who singularly captures small moments of beauty, as I explained earlier on I find these collected ephemera to be representative of the essence of spring.
Sleep the Clock Around – Belle and Sebastian
The whimsical production of this song in the beginning sounds like birdsong and the song itself sounds like reemerging into the world after a winter of hibernation, sleeping the clock around. The line, “Then the moment will come, and the memory will shine” in conjunction with the brass and synths is absolutely euphoric.
Rise – Eddie Vedder
Like Autumn, the transitional nature of this season can often place me in a plaintive mood and the line “such is the passage of time/ too fast to fold” very much reflects this. This rousing tune from the Pearl Jam frontman, created for the Into the Wild soundtrack, will stir you from your winter slumber.
Silver Soul – Beach House
Beach house sounds like daydreaming feels, and I often catch myself at the moment fantasising about the idyll of summer. The hook is a repeated mantra that “it is happening again” announcing to the world the excitement of a new season and assuring us that with the continuous passage of time, spring will roll around once more no matter what.