Marcel Winatschek

When You’ve Stopped Pretending

December has this particular quality where the days feel like they’re already in the past even as you’re living them. Everything wraps up and turns a little melancholic, and the music you reach for shifts accordingly.

This week’s mix runs on We Are Soldiers We Have Guns, Architecture In Helsinki, and Anna Ternheim—three artists who have almost nothing in common except that all three reward sustained attention. Architecture In Helsinki’s orchestrated pop chaos is the opposite of seasonal: relentlessly alive, arrangements piling on top of each other like they’re running out of time to say everything. Ternheim drops the temperature by about ten degrees in response. Her songs sit with a specific kind of feeling that most songwriters work to resolve—she just leaves it open.

Music for the last few weeks of the year. The kind you put on when the windows are fogged and you’ve stopped pretending you’ll get much else done today.