Just Get Me Past This Dead And Eternal Snow: 5 Songs for Seasonal Affective Disorder

This week's songs are from Andrew Bird, Labi Siffre, Westside Cowboy, Trace Mountains, and Dean Jones & the Original Cast of Company

RIP Andrew Ranken - The Pogues - “Sally MacLennane”

Also known as “The Clobberer,” Andrew Ranken was the drummer and a founding member of the seminal Celtic punks The Pogues. We’ll have more on the Pogues next month, but Ranken passed away last week at 72. It was Ranken’s idea to borrow a quote from Winston Churchill to name their second album Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash. From that album, “Sally MacLennane”—named not for a woman, but a brand of stout—includes a propulsive performance from Ranken, charging forward like the train the singer is heading toward on his way out of the pub.

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Many years ago, towards the end of February/early March, some coworkers and I were packing up for the day and I made a comment about feeling so sluggish and grumpy and ambivalent towards everything. A colleague who was always getting into in-depth analysis of the weather, as if there was no such thing as small talk interjected:

“That could be because we’ve been in one of the longest stretches of consecutive days without sunshine in decades”

And that’s when I recognized just how right he was—and how cyclical that feeling came around about mid-February.

I can deal with cold. I can deal with snow. I can’t deal with having no sun. Around those stretches is when I get worn down and ambivalent about everything except sitting on the couch and watching Coen Brothers movies. There are ways to shake oneself out of it a bit that involve sheer force of will and a bit of consistency. But really, there is no way out but through.

And we had a good stretch of below-freezing weather for a while as I wrote this. Now as I publish it, we’ve reached our Fake Spring. So maybe save this for when the winter whiplashes back around.

Here are 5 songs to help you through the seasonal affective disorder.

“The music that I write is often not necessarily full of doom and gloom. You’ll notice in most of the darkest songs, the music is actually pretty peaceful and lulling.” - Andrew Bird

Andrew Bird- “Lull”

Andrew Bird has made a tradition of returning to Chicago to perform a series of vaguely Holiday-related concerts, which he calls Gezelligheid—a Dutch term for “coziness” or “joy” or “warmth.” It’s a fitting name, setting, and theme and is the perfect way to experience and enjoy his music, which offers a bit of all three. On “Lull,” Bird’s music tip toes around while he sings his own melody into the realization that he’s gone a bit beyond the typical preference for being alone:

Being alone, it can be quite romantic
Like Jacques Cousteau underneath the Atlantic
A fantastic voyage to parts unknown
Going to depths where the sun's never shone
And I fascinate myself when I'm alone

So I go a little overboard, but hang on to the hull
While I'm airbrushing fantasy art on a life
That's really kind of dull
Oh, I'm in a lull

It’s the strings and Norah O’Connor’s light harmonies that bring this shuffle together into something that captures the full cycle—the light pleasure of staying inside and doing nothing, the realization that it’s gone a bit beyond that, the boredom, and on through to the droning and cloudy hum that persists but has a touch of warmth in it.

“Although it’s difficult for people to believe, being rich and famous never occurred to me in my plan. I realised by the time of my first album that I was not in the mainstream. So all I actually wanted was for my work to be useful.” - Labi Siffre

Labi Siffre - “Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying”

About a year ago, I’d seen British singer-songwriter Labi Siffre mentioned in a Robin Pecknold interview, gave his music a listen, and enjoyed it immensely. And it’s been one of those things where since then I’ve see him mentioned everywhere, seen his record covers on the wall in music shops, and heard his music in movies and TV series. Either there’s been a low-key resurgence of his work, or I’d just been blind and now I see. You’ll get the Robin Pecknold association (Graham Nash as well) in less than 10 seconds of “Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying.” Their voices are both bright and higher register; their guitars are lush and resonant. Siffre uses the words in the title for a good bit of wordplay that both affirms and calls into question every statement he’s making. The entire Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying album has cozy winter vibes (check out “Watch Me” as well).

“A part of me at that time resonated deeply with Matthew Sweet's plain lyrics about loneliness and longing beneath all the dope guitar solos in his recording, so it was important to me that we highlight that emotionality in our version.” - Dave Benton

Trace Mountains - “Sick of Myself” (Matthew Sweet Cover)

Dave Benton aka Trace Mountains has a fragility in his voice that often contrasts with his evocative and assured music. Matthew Sweet often masked the vulnerability in his lyrics with guitar-heavy power pop (emphasis on the power). “Sick of Myself” was one of his most well-known songs. Here, Trace Mountains cuts it much slower and in line with the emotions Sweet’s version masks.

But I'm sick of myself when I look at you
Something is beautiful and true
In a world that's ugly and a lie
It's hard to even want to try
And I'm beginning to think
Baby you don't know

The piano, Benton’s voice and singing style all shine. And Sweet’s incredible melody in-tact works just as well as a lament as they do in a rave up.

“By leaving this hyper-specific type of lyrics behind, as long as the situation that you are writing about is hyper-personal, whatever words you use, no matter how vague you make it, it then becomes suddenly universal.” - Reuben Haycocks

Westside Cowboy - “the Wahs”

Like Matthew Sweet’s original “Sick of Myself,” here’s a power pop rave-up trying its darndest to shake oneself out of a weighted blanket and feel something. It’s a chorus delivered as if refusing to tolerate the emotional vacancy any longer.

I'm waitin' for a sign
To tell me I'm alive
To tell me I'm alright

Westside Cowboy’s So Much Country ‘Til We Get There is a fantastic follow up to 2025’s promising This Better Be Something Great—both are EPs. The band considers their sound as "Britainicana," but I hear more Murder by Death and The Thermals. It’s music that will make you feel anything but ambivalent.

“Music straightjackets a poem and prevents it from breathing on its own, whereas it liberates a lyric. Poetry doesn't need music; lyrics do.” - Stephen Sondheim

Dean Jones & the Company Ensemble - “Being Alive”

One of my other hobbies is watching Criterion Closet Picks videos. One of Judd Apatow’s picks is D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary on the Original Cast Album: Company and he calls out Dean Jones’ performance of “Being Alive.” I don’t know much Broadway (or Sondheim), but remember the song from Marriage Story, in which Adam Driver performs it at a karaoke, and in the context of romantic regret and fondly remembering the partnership with another person. Jones’s version really delivers the goods—you can see the pride on the faces of his castmates, and you can feel the emotional tone and the character’s desires shift with each verse. On the surface, the singer rejects everyone, they can find all the reasons not to do something, not to want anything. But inside of that is a person so desperate for someone to pull them out and reconnect them to life, even the shitty bits. Over the course of the song, that person emerges from Jones’s voice.

Thanks for reading. Enjoy listening.

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