Coming Out of the Dark: 5 Songs for Spring
This week's songs are from John Coltrane, Dennis Wilson, Noah & the Whale, Peter Tosh, and Joanna Newsom
Every temperate location has a version of the “Actual 12 seasons,” that typically gets shared around this time of year. Is it “Fake Spring”? Or are we entering “Third Winter”? There’s a lot to get through before we start noticing the leaves on the trees, and figure out how not to over- or under-dress for the day. But that doesn’t mean we can’t start mentally preparing for open windows and treating our Vitamin D deficiencies.
Here are 5 songs that welcome warmth, sunshine, and a little bit of self renewal.
“May we never forget that in the sunshine of our lives, through the storm and after the rain—it is all with God—in all ways and forever.” -John Coltrane
John Coltrane - “After the Rain”
John Coltrane concluded the liner notes of his definitive work, A Love Supreme, with quote above. But “After the Rain,” is not on that album. It was recorded over a year before the December 1964 session that produced A Love Supreme. He’s repurposed the image in the liner notes to emphasize his hard-won clarity and overtly religious vision for A Love Supreme. But here, it’s a really warm ballad that delivers on its title in the mood it sets. There’s light splashing in the cymbals and little else from the drums. The bass sounds like droplets hitting at a window sill and the piano and saxophone bring the warmth of a sun. It might be too soon to get outside and enjoy it, but the desire beckons.
“I'd play the piano with a click-track, and I would close my eyes, and then I would hear something, and I'd move on...and move on, and move on, and move on, and move on, and one thing led to another, and that's how it happened. I don't know...the experience of experiencing an artistic moment...is I guess fantasizing.” - Dennis Wilson
Dennis Wilson - “Rainbows”
If you’ve ever asked yourself, “What were the Beach Boys up to between Pet Sounds and ‘Kokomo’?” that journey tragically and wonderfully ends at Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue. The Beach Boys took on a whole host of line-up configurations in the 1970s. Brian Wilson played a lesser role, as he dealt with mental illness struggles. Dennis Wilson’s connection to Charles Manson are talked about as odd bits of trivia, or in sordid accounts of Manson lore. But it weighed on him heavily and led to substance abuse issues. Compounded by that was a hand injury that kept him from playing the drums. Having been taught the basics by older brother Brian, Dennis took to the piano and flirted with songwriting and solo work early in the decade. It took him until 1977 to record and release Pacific Ocean Blue. It was the first Beach Boys solo album, and the others made sure to put him in his place. Over the next six years Wilson’s life spiraled further. He died in 1983.
All of that is a pretty depressing summation of Dennis Wilson’s life. But Pacific Ocean Blue tells a much different story. It’s a really unique, big-sounding album that defies easy categorization. “Rainbows” in particular is a bright, urgent celebration of some damn fine weather.
Rainbows shining on my shoulders
Ooh sunshine warming up my day
Birds sing and in the air the sound of spring
And in the wind the flowers bring
Their presents to the day
The song connects those wonderful sensations to how the singer feels about a lover, hoping they can relate. The high and tight banjo/mandolin/capo’d guitar contrast really nicely with Wilson’s low and gruff voice. It makes all the joy and earnestness of the song—in the lyrics, arrangement, and production—feel hard-won. Just like those first few tastes of Spring.
Noah & the Whale - “Blue Skies”
Sometimes you come across a song and pick up that one song and do absolutely zero further investigation of the band. Your interest starts and ends right there. Most often, that one song fades out of rotation after a little while and its forgotten in time. But for some reason, “Blue Skies” doesn’t drop out of the rotation very long for me. The song is off of Noah & the Whale’s aptly titled The First Days of Spring. In addition to the slow pulsing of the drums, it’s the hollow-body guitar with it’s own agenda; it’s atmospheric in a way that can resonate with the winter gloom, but also delivers some uplift. All that is supported by the optimism in the lyrics. The choral vocals at the end get a little hammy, which may be why I’m suspicious of looking much further.
Peter Tosh - “Pick Myself Up”
One of the original Wailers, Peter Tosh seems to share an affinity for birds with Bob Marley (and Toots Hibbard as we’ve seen) as a symbol of good feelings and being unburdened. Turns out, birds have symbolic significance in Jamaican and especially Rastafarian culture. In addition to hope and freedom, they are also a symbol of repatriation—if not physically, at least spiritually.
From the start of “Pick Myself Up,” Tosh is watching the birds sing and wishing he could fly along with them. While in “Three Little Birds,” Marley is famously not worried about a thing, Tosh is struggling to find himself the basics, like where his next meal is coming from. But while watching the birds, he affirms a commitment to do something about it:
I really try
I got to
Pick myself up
Dust myself off
Start all over, again
In an odd little trick music can play, the tempo seems to pick up when he jumps into the refrain because the drums drop a beat on the two; however, the tempo is steady. Also noteworthy is Tosh’s mild resignation in the vocals countered by the bright synthesizer and some backing vocals championing his desire to shake off his condition and start fresh. It’s a mental and emotional spring cleaning.
“I’ve always found joy in seeking out musically challenging things. Challenging in a way that music allows you in through the act of trying to crack it open, that allows you to transcend what you thought you understood about music in a way that is joy-giving – in a very natural physical way. Like learning to do something new, or cracking some new metric pattern open, just floods your whole body with happy chemicals. It’s very physical, it’s adrenaline and serotonin when that happens, it’s as if you could just click over to speaking a new language. That experience within music making has always been very exciting to me to a point of almost being addictive.” - Joanna Newsom
Joanna Newsom - “Sprout and the Bean”
I had a neighborhood friend growing up, with whom I would spend hours playing with Legos in their basement. We would build houses and vehicles for our Lego avatars. I would build a house that looked like a house, and a boxy looking car. He would design these elaborate multi-level buildings and spaceships that had a docking station in the house. What I’m getting at is while some of us are putting pieces together, others are creating their own worlds. Joanna Newsom is very much in the latter category.
After Steve Albini died, I dove into many of the albums he recorded I knew and loved, and then into many that I didn’t know that well. I wasn’t even aware that he had recorded Joanna Newsom. I had tried in the past to get into her world, but for most, I imagine it’s not something that clicks right away. It’s like Pleasantville—it takes time and a little bit of exploration before you can see color in a black and white world. Her oddly-structured vocal delivery, narratively intricate songs, and she mostly only plays a harp? I’m still skeptical of the idea on paper, but it has since clicked. When it does, it’s a pretty fantastic world to enter into. “Sprout and the Bean” is a great place to start. A rare effect—likely the result of great recording—is when you can hear an instrument being played and not just the sound emanating from it. You can hear the small flicks of her fingers plucking the harp strings. At first the song feels like a lullaby of sorts, but the lyrics are occasionally menacing and adopt dream logic—vivid, but fragmentary. So how does it relate to spring? Well, as something of a refrain, Newsom poses an important question:
Should we go outside?
Should we break some bread?
Are you interested?
Full playlists of songs featured in 5 Songs: