You have every right to cringe at that headline. But that’s the kind of cabin fever you get when you’re snowed in after a week of “back to normalcy.” Or maybe you don’t get that bug and enjoy a day free of outside contact, content to binge on Netflix and all the bread and milk. Or maybe you endure the weather to craft a snow fort, like the Stevens Engineer you are. Or maybe you’re like Andy and you make awful, chillingly bad puns to yourself to pass the time. However you spend your snow day, here are some tracks to bundle up with.
“Disintegration Anxiety” – Explosions in the Sky
Explosions In the Sky are an instrumental post-rock group that are well known for their (err) explosions in music form (just listen to “The Only Moment We Were Alone”). For their latest track, “Disintegration Anxiety,” the band lightens the gun powder for a more secluded and anxious mood. The drums have sharp tones and reflect a lot of what anxiety feels like – hopelessness and fear – repeating the same motifs to symbolize the fact that the condition feels like it never ends. How does this have to do with winter? For me, the cold weather certainly makes me feel secluded and anxious. I don’t know anything else better to listen to while walking in the tundra than a song that shows I’m not alone in the need for warmth. – Ryan Klem
“Winter Now” – Broadcast
One telling motif of an Under the Radar feature, written by Mark Redfern around the time of “Haha Sound,” is living life inside your head; much like the introverted, bundled up nature of her band’s music, lead singer/songwriter, Trish Keenan (R.I.P.) devolves several instances of this, picking apart bouts of astral projection and a nightmare of being shot. There’s also talk of Joseph Byrd, leader of the experimental collective, United States of America, in a mental asylum – not to mention an anecdote about a chance sighting of Phil Spector, whose psychotic traversal ended up with abusive ends. There’s reason to believe, then, that these heady subjects influenced the words of “Winter Now,” with the subject keeping “sane when all is wrong” while the “deepest snow” lies all around. Though the heart “waits in winter,” the brain reminds it that “it’s just a dream.” – Andy Waldron
“Pictures of You” – The Cure
The first snowfall of the year came when I was in the passenger seat of a deep impact blue muscle car. Playing the part of DJ, I chose “Pictures of You.” When I first explored The Cure, I was in middle school and I never ventured outside of “4:13 Dream.” But over the last couple years I’ve found a deeper appreciation—the band holds a nook in my head next to Tears For Fears and New Order. They all have this bare emotional feeling that seems to come off as really hot or, in the case of this night, very cold. Something about having all that warm weather in the middle of December suddenly breaking with this snow perfectly depicted the versatility of the emotions in their music. “Pictures of You” hones in on this feeling as a telling of a distant time: I see it as a winter recollection of summer’s events, but not last summer’s. It’s a summer long ago that seems to clutch at December and all you have to really remember the best of it are the pictures. – Emma Murphy
Be sure to check out these and other member picks via our “50 Songs for Snow” playlist, only on WCPR’s official Spotify.
