To Everything There is a Season

Hello, my name is Eric Atienza. I'm addicted to making playlists.

The left bar on my iTunes is cluttered with an endless array of lists in various states of completion for a myriad different occasions – some of which I don't even remember anymore.

I also have this little idiosyncrasy in which I tend to enjoy different types of music more than others depending on the season. In the winter, for instance, I eschew the dancy, quirky, sometimes catchy tunes for a mix of darker, heavier, driving songs and slow, introspective, almost mournful tracks. The former help me deal with the cold outside as wind buffets my body and ice threatens to send me to an unceremonious rendezvous with the ground, and the latter I actually find very comforting while inside my (relatively) warm apartment watching the world freeze from my window.

These two little peculiarities of personality have led me, in the last few years, to incessantly create mix tapes and CDs – in the pre-iPod days – of "comfort music" for lack of a better term. Like all comfort products these combinations would probably not be healthy (musically or mentally) for me if I listened to them exclusively. They are, instead, little shots of energy and sanity when the stresses of the season threaten to overwhelm. For the month of February, this collection of 14 songs will be my crutch, my blanket, my performance-enhancing drug. This, and alcohol.

1. Bright Eyes – If Winter Ends. It begins with a cacophony of screams, feedback and the lines

I dreamt of a fever, one that would cure me of this cold, winter set heart."

It's perfect for a month of short, freezing days when everyone wants to isolate themselves in the warmth of their homes. In the days when I couldn't stand the cracked, screeching vocals of Connor Oberst I still loved this song.

2. Mars Volta – Intertiatic ESP. Blistering guitars, dark chords, odd time signatures and haunting yet somehow incendiary vocals. What more do you need from a song in the dead of winter?

3. Coheed and Cambria – Everything Evil. Ever since post-hardcore made its debut in the early days of this decade it's been the defining genre of my winters. Powerful, dark music that is alternately melodic and driving. Coheed is one of the most inventive of the post-hardcore bands, springing from Mars Volta's branch to create a sound uniquely their own.

4. Saves the Day – Sell All My Old Clothes, I'm Off to Heaven. I love Saves the Day. Their music is simple, their lyrics personal, plain and completely unpretentious. They are not epic, they are not earth-shattering. But there are few bands I would rather consistently listen to whenever I need a pick-me-up.

5. Muse – Stockholm Syndrome. See entry for Mars Volta and add even faster guitars and a double bass. When this song comes on the bitter wind hears it and respectfully goes around me.

6. Brand New – I Will Play My Game Beneath the Spinlight. While Coheed is the most original and solid band of post-hardcore, Brand New is responsible for the best album of the genre. This track from Deja Entendu opens with

"The time has come for colds, and overcoats. Quiet on the ride we're all just waiting to get home. Another week away, my greatest fear. I need the smell of summer I need its noises in my ear.

Every song on the record is bleak yet somehow catchy, constantly building up to crescendo and crashing back to stillness and this particular song about an isolating winter away from home is Brand New at their best.

7. The Walkmen – Thinking of a Dream I Had. Hamilton Leithauser's scratchy, rasping scream is the auditory equivalent of the post-Christmas winter season. Barren and hacksaw sharp, when it is unleashed it cuts straight to your flesh no matter how many layers you put on when you left the house.

8. Jawbreaker – Ache.Great song from a great album by a great band. All I need to do is wrap Blake Schwarzenbach's heavy guitar riffs around me, and all is right with the world.

So right, so wrong, another winter's coming on. You win, you lose, it's the same old news."

9. Texas is the Reason – There's No Way I Can Talk Myself Out of This One. 2 guitars + 1 bass + 1 drum kit = 10 years of hopeless yet unrestrained passion.

10. The Gloria Record – Grace the Snow is Here. This song is melody married to high-pitched and desolate vocals. Instrumentally it's pristine in its emptiness like a frozen field after first snowfall. Vocally it's as warm and desperate as Irish coffee in front of a fireplace by yourself, late at night, in the dark. And who doesn't love that?

11. Simon and Garfunkel – The Sound of Silence. If you haven't figured it out yet, my winters are generally colder, quieter and more isolated than my other seasons. Just like this song!

12. The Shins – A Comet Appears. This is currently my favorite track off of the Shins fantastic new release, Wincing the Night Away. It has the qualities of all of the slower songs on this list: Bare, subdued instrumentations supporting soft, personal almost heartbreaking lyrics.

We can blow on our thumbs and posture, but the lonely are such delicate things. The wind from a wasp could blow them, into the sea with stones on their feet, lost to the light and the loving we need. Still to come, the worst part and you know it. There is a numbness, in your heart and it's growing.

13. Emily Haines – Nothing and Nowhere. Haines made her career singing clever hooks over dancy rock music and after three albums (two released) she matured from "the Canadian Karen O" into a much enjoyed and lusted after indie-pop star in her own right.. And then she released her solo album, Knives Don't Have Your Back, filled with tracks containing simply a piano and her velvet and smoke voice.

Apartments are cages I still don't know what is permanent. All my possessions are precious. All my possessions, I somehow lost them. We travel so light when we're floating by. Seems nothing and nowhere is golden.

14. Alkaline Trio – Enjoy Your Day. A tip of my hat to Valentine's Day on this, the 14th of February (get it?) Perhaps not a song most would think of to commemorate the day, it is a melancholy wish for happiness from a jilted and broken lover to his lost love. It's terribly sad and poignant, but incredibly well done.

Happy Valentine's day. I hope the sun's out in New York. I hope he bought you roses.

Back To Top