Plastic Weather, Solar Fever

Of Montreal “A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger” – As I walked around listening to this song last night, I noticed a slight sprinkle of flurries fall from the sky. I might not have even noticed them if they weren’t illuminated by street lights, but there they were, sparsely separated and drifting downward, looking more like a half-assed school play special effect than the sort of significant snowfall that has been totally elusive in this region of the country during this sad excuse for a winter.

This weather is mainly troubling because it’s very likely a symptom of potentially disastrous global warming, but I’d be lying if I said that most of my bitterness isn’t tied up in aesthetics. I like snow — a lot. It’s beautiful, and I find it to be both calming and inspiring. I enjoy the way the city slows down a bit during a major snow storm, and the way everything looks a few days later, with the remaining patches of white slowly melting away to small banks speckled with dirt, like scoops of Oreo ice cream. I especially love passing the white capped mountains, icicle waterfalls, and (if I’m lucky) frozen river on the ride up the Hudson Line just after a storm. I’m sure part of my affection stems from not having to commute or drive, but fuck that. I have to spend the summer listening to jackasses talk about how much they love the goddamn heat, so I see no reason to apologize for my preferences.

I’ve been waiting since the middle of the fall to listen to this particular Of Montreal song on a snowy day, and I’m beginning to wonder if I’m going to have to wait until next year. In a way, the song may be sort of redundant in that context, since it sounds so much like a winter wonderland that it may be better as a stimulus substitute than an aesthetic accessory. Most of the first half of Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? has a distinct, cartoonish wintery feel to it, but “A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger” is the one that seems to whole-heartedly embrace that frigid scenery rather than let it serve as an implied backdrop for the foregrounded emotional content of the songs.

Not coincidentally, “…Kongsvinger” is the first song in the album’s sequence to step out of the existential terror that marks the opening five tracks. It’s a song about recovery and renewal, and taking the first steps toward reclaiming control over your life following a spell of depression and poor luck. It finds the joy and humor in a bad situation, and essentially concludes the first emotional arc of the album, leaving the remainder of the record to deal with the messy work of re-entering society after restructuring one’s own character. (Click here to buy it from Polyvinyl.)

Wings “Arrow Through Me” – Surely no one needs to be told that Paul McCartney is a genius, though it may sometimes be necessary to remind people that his run of brilliant material hardly stops at the end of his time with the Beatles, or even halfway through his post-Beatles career. His 1979 single “Arrow Through Me” feels as effortlessly perfect as most any of his 60s classics, with a smooth, creamy groove and memorable melody that filters 70s R&B through his personal style, resulting in a peculiar sort of Anglicized Quiet Storm. The production is especially great in the way that it lets Paul’s voice drift off into an echo at the end of the chorus, and sets its mellow keyboard tone against the crisp pop of the rhythm section and a bold horn figure that sounds slightly distanced and inhumanly precise. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)