Every seasons sounds like something. Every part, each early sun set and every hot summer day. Late November and December always sounds the same.

Not counting the constant barrage of Christmas music, there’s a beautiful sort of hollow coldness that just is so right with certain bands. Each year I piece together my late autumn/early winter play list it is almost alway the same. Usually unintentionally (perhaps I should begin re-using the same one…).

I realise that ‘sounds of the season’ is a personal preference. There’s a conversation I had six years ago in high school (lord help me) with another particularly prickly boy in my class. I had mentioned to my teacher that I was rather looking forward to summer so I could unleash my summer music. The boy turns to me and snaps, “Why? So you can, like totally listen to happy music?”

As everyone did in that…lovely little high school his statement was thick with love and charisma. Support!

So I had to correct him – the last days of Spring meant Belle & Sebastian, much too early for pop music. But to him, he assumed girls (the whole lot of us) just wanted to listen to perky pop music. Perhaps that’s true for some people, but it is what we each want to feel from the time. Our memories dictate this entirely.

Saying what we should be listening to now is never a collective thing. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be sharing the music and the stories we each have. For every song we have no relationship with, maybe a friend does. That’s what it really is all about.

I listen to quite a bit more punk music at this time, a genre I’ve mostly grown out of. It reminds me of driving home from my first job as a kid – the first taste of freedom with the rebellion of money I made for myself. Then this time of the year also reminds me of when my mom first played me Bob Dylan. The rain outside was freezing, almost ready for snow. This time of year is when I revisit classical and songs that remind me of being young.

Now late winter, that is an entirely different story.