End of Winter, Press Play

Somewhere in late February the light changes before the weather does. The cold is still there, the wet is still there, but for about forty-five minutes in the afternoon the sun actually does something rather than just hanging in the sky looking apologetic. It’s enough to make you want to change what’s playing. The winter playlist—dense, inward, good for 3am but wrong for a window cracked open—starts to feel like wearing the wrong coat.

Marina & the Diamonds had just put out The Family Jewels, and it sounded exactly right for that transitional moment: theatrical and self-aware, the kind of record that knows it’s performing but commits so completely that the artifice becomes the point. Blood Red Shoes were back with something louder and more abrasive, the Brighton two-piece doing what they do best—guitar and drums stripped to the bone, nothing decorative, no fat left to trim. Asobi Seksu were still living in the soft reverb of Hush, and that album had a way of sounding different in March than it did in November, like it had been waiting for the season to catch up with it.

There was also something genuinely terrible on this particular playlist—a pop track so dumb and so catchy that it burrowed into the skull and refused to leave, the kind of song you’re embarrassed to know all the words to but privately grateful exists. Every good spring mixtape needs one of those. It’s a palate cleanser. It’s also a personality test.