After a certain point, winter isn’t winter anymore, it’s Almost Spring. Because it’s been winter for too long and even though it’s still cold and it sometimes snows, the skies are a bit too blue. 

This doesn’t happen often (only comes once a year) so don’t let it slip past, because stubbornly titling late-winter ‘spring’ is just like painting pastel flowers on coffin shaped nails, and it’s wearing mini-skirts with puffer coats and layered corduroy pants with tank tops, it’s walking around an art museum just to get your steps in because when it’s not yet spring, everything becomes about all the contradictions that go unnoticed until it’s looked (waited) for. 

Wait for spring’s dusk to autumn’s dawn and how it’s like when your desk smells like your raspberry scented candle even though it’s been weeks since you last lit it. Spring is the melancholy to summers nostalgia, spring is the manic pixie dream girl to winters femme fatale. 

But it’s not yet spring yet, we’re still stuck in this poor liminal excuse of a season that is your favorite place in your hometown being the airport. And when we’re so desolately waiting waiting waiting, there really isn’t much else to do but cancel out all the noise with music (noise but good). 

COLD GRAY SKIES:

Still (Hali)

Audeline (Alexandra Savior)

These songs are winter; they’re too blatantly winter that no amount of obstinate gaslighting will work, so winter it is. Hali was discovered at 3 monthly listeners, is now at 10 monthly listeners and I don’t know anything about them except for their spotify message: “welcome my tiny electronic universe. hope you enjoy your stay / Posted by Hali” 

[I hoped I could wish you luck] except this time the music’s in a major key — it’s sunnier.

The sun was shining so bright that the groundhog saw its shadow. Winter’s here to stay, and with it it brings: [C minor] Audeline. Savior’s voice has a foggy note to it; Sun stole spring away temporarily and Fog played accomplice. 

[Open book, but- / Oh yeah most of the pages are wired / Straight to his arm … Audeline]

SNOW?

Through the Wire – Interlude (Rina Sawayama)

It’s like spacey like dissociating and like spiraling around you and then suddenly you’re stuck in the middle of snow and we’re back to winter so might as well roll it like a stop sign, smoke it like Chekhov — it’s (not yet) spring after all. 

FLOWERS OR WEEDS

Apocalyptic Crush (Olivia Rodrigo)

Closing Doors (The Moth & The Mirror)

It’s not freezing cold anymore but it’s still not spring enough yet. “Apocalyptic Crush” (“apocalpytic crush” on Spotify as a podcast episode with horrible audio quality) is too jealous to be the first crush that is spring. “Closing Doors” is like eating chicken noodle soup but just the broth but in a good way (and chicken noodle soup is a winter soup. Spring is for chowder)

SHAPES IN CLOUDS

Lemon Pie (Science Noodles)

Romanticist (Yves Tumor)

“Lemon Pie” draws rube-goldberg-esque lines in the clouds, “Romanticist” is napping. “Romanticist” is going to a flea market for a mini watering can and finding a red daisy rock heartbreaker bass guitar. “Romanticist” is playing a red daisy rock heartbreaker bass while eating blackberries (Heaney). 

FALLING APART AND FALLING CHERRY BLOSSOMS

Caroline (Arlo Parks)

The Woman That Loves You (Japanese Breakfast)

It’s now spring, but everything’s falling apart. A couple is fighting on a train (this time I’m not even making stuff up the lyrics are about a couple fighting on a train). But I can’t tell whether or not the narrator is in love with Caroline or not. 

And then it transitions to “The Woman That Loves You”. This has some of the best uses of sound effects I’ve ever seen. And then suddenly you’re crying in HMart (This reference is cool and cultured and art nouveau because Japanese Breakfast is the author of Crying in H Mart.) Very psychopomp (the name of the album is “Psychopomp”). Psychopomp was written when Japanese Breakfast (Michelle Zauner) was preparing herself for farewells from a mother undergoing cancer treatment. And so in a way the album’s an immortalization of her mother. There’s nothing more spring than that.

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE

Across the Universe (Fiona Apple)

I wouldn’t be able to end this playlist with anything other than Fiona Apple’s cover of “Across the Universe”. It’s sweet, and if it were any other day it’d be simply a very pretty song. But when it’s following “TWTLY” and “Caroline” that used to be “Lemon Pie” and “You Are Home” and “Romanticist” and then go all the way back when it was just “Still,” suddenly we’re here. That’s really all there is to waiting for spring when it’s not yet spring.