It’s starting to feel a lot like Wisconsin outside. I don’t know why the coming of fall is always such a shock to my senses; I’ve been a Midwesterner practically my whole life. There’s just something about the rapid transition from sauna to tundra that gets me every year.
What is striking, while completely logical, is how the visible campus population diminishes as everyone follows the heat indoors. The libraries stay as packed as the cafes and there are times when walking outside feels like a stroll through a ghost town in the next ice age.
The absence of pedestrians hasn’t reached full desertion quite yet. It will soon. When that time comes, the streets get lonely walking from point A to B. Other times they feel pleasantly, even satisfyingly, unoccupied. Both are realizations distant from each other, stemming from the same question: Where the heck did everybody go?
A wintry ghost town deserves a playlist. In this week’s playlist, I strive not so much to accompany as to frame the empty Madison. As a preview of what’s to come – and all too quickly, I’m afraid – it is a musical portrait of the ups and downs, the contemplation and desolation, of Madison without people.
In preview of the soon-to-be-empty city, the following songs are unhurried for the enjoyment of a city at peace, minimalistic for the lack of activity and warm because who wants to be cold? In sum, this is a mix of vacant songs for vacant winter streets.
“Propeller 9” – The Notwist
Variations of electronic music today are everywhere. Behind every dance track is an inescapable human presence stringing it together with predictable structure. The Notwist’s electronics aren’t exactly dance friendly, but they manage in “Propeller 9” to do what few care to attempt. They create a subdued, chilly atmosphere removed from human control.
An organic flow of loose beats with an underlying bass line tying them together, they mimic how machines might sound if left to their own devices out in the cold. Escaping the human trap of sounding too deliberate, the sounds maintain a streaming togetherness far from random, close to natural. Arguably, this is what University Ave. sounds like at 4 a.m. on a windless Monday in December when no one is around to notice.
“You and Whose Army”? – Radiohead
When someone finally decides to step onto the University sidewalk, “Propeller 9” ceases to haunt the streets and a new challenge hovers under streetlights. It’s been established, when you get the eerie feeling that you’re being watched, you probably are. And how does that watcher’s voice sound? It sounds just like Thom Yorke. But don’t worry yourself, he’s all talk in “You and Whose Army.”
Like a chilly walk home, this track starts calmly enough with melancholy crooning and light chords. Then, the frigid solitude sets in as the song picks up into a pace-crescendo climax sure to get your hurrying on your way.
“Wisconsin” – Bon Iver
Finally you reach home and look out the window to discover you were not alone. Striding quickly, arms crossed to conserve heat, another pedestrian experiences the same rising chill to the bones. From your perspective it’s all the safe, solitary warmth of “Wisconsin.”
Justin Vernon’s imagery and lonely inspiration is close to that of Azure Ray, and if there is anyone qualified to comment on the disappearance of people during a Wisconsin winter, it’s him. The majority of his debut album For Emma, Forever Ago, which houses this song as a bonus track, was recorded in a desolate cabin in northern Wisconsin. True, there may not be much population density in northern Wisconsin to begin with, at least not compared to Madison, but both locales remain similarly empty this time of year.
“Honey Won’t You Let Me In” – The Tallest Man on Earth
When it comes to music production, there are few forms simpler than a man and a guitar. It doesn’t get much lonelier than that either, in the recording studio or on the sidewalk. And when you’re The Tallest Man on Earth, you know how to channel the solitude and bring it across in your music. Straight from the opening lines of snow, the scene perfectly matches the state of changing seasons and churns out a setting any Badger can relate to.
Another aspect that is plain from the get-go is an unavoidable comparison to one Bob Dylan. It isn’t an uncommon comparison, nor is it a surprising one. His nasally verses, acoustic strumming and general measure are all reminiscent of Dylan. As a comparison more relevant to this playlist, or at least a source of atmospheric inspiration, is to Bon Iver, who The Tallest Man toured with in 2008. As seen earlier up the page, Bon Iver knows the theme and must have passed something on.
“Signs in the Leaves” – Azure Ray
During the same time that people flee the streets to warmth, the last leaves are blustering around the sidewalk in their place, far from treetop origins. It truly is a picturesque scene. When the final lone leaf drifts from a branch, I imagine it dances through the air to the melody of this song, its tune echoing through desolate alleys. No one knows which leaf falls last, so I guess my conjecture will remain a mystery for now.
Azure Ray does not mask the heartbreak as inspiration behind the song, and it may seem a touch extreme for the playlist at hand. The sound, however, shares a certain tranquility with a northern winter city reflected in beautifully simple acoustics and harmonies. That simplicity is all it takes, maybe all that is possible, to depict the after-effect of the phenomenon of disappearing students in a Madison winter. It’s coming fast.
Joe Nistler ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in Italian and journalism.
