Ever New: Four Albums to Set the Atmosphere for Spring

A “plant journal” analysis of records from Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Hiroshi Yoshimura, Green-House, and Harold Budd.

We’ve made it through the drudgery of winter and, man, do I feel it. In Seattle, winters are a brutal time. While other areas certainly get hit harder with harsher weather – snowstorms, blizzards, and all that – Seattle hits us with the unending… grey. That dull, soul-sucking blah that eats away at you. Some days I find beauty in it, but other days, it feels like it’s out to destroy me.

But! Spring is here. And while spring means many false starts and teases of nicer weather, even just these brief glimpses of sun uplift my spirit. We have a Magnolia tree in our backyard that blooms right at the start of spring. The white petals always look so magnificent, almost holy. They don’t last long – a few strong breezes and a couple times of me accidentally tossing our dog’s ball into the branches, and the petals inevitably fall to the ground until next year. While the petals are fleeting, I look forward to this symbol of renewal every year. Even their impermanence reminds me that these seasons will come and go faster than I think. And maybe instead of wishing the next season would come, I should be appreciating the time I have here in this world all the more.

This all got me thinking of what music I lean toward in the spring. Of course, I’ve been living with ambient music heavily this past year working on my book. While I was excited to be done with the manuscript and ready to move on to other genres… I just feel myself still actually wanting to live in that world. Ambient – and more broadly, “atmospheric music” (as if ambient weren’t broad enough) – feels like it goes hand in hand with this season. The music often focuses on subtle but significant changes. Spring isn’t a huge about-face from winter, but soon we’ll be eased right into the scorcher of summer, and it’ll feel seamless.

While I thought about what albums to suggest, I kept thinking about plants. They come up on several of the albums I’ve mentioned below. Of course, this is the time of year to get back outside and into the gardens. Instead of just writing an essay or blurbs, I tried to adapt the “aesthetic” of plant journals to share some of the albums I plan on putting on in my rotation this spring. Spring is a time of change and rebirth and these four albums, I think, reflect that spirit very well.

Stray Thoughts

LISTENING: YHWH Nailgun - 45 Pounds

Well, I’ve spent a lot of space here talking about peace. So here’s something quite the opposite: chaos. Yes, folks, it’s not all Magnolia petals and ambient over here at Another Thought HQ (though wouldn’t that be nice?). One thing I’m trying to get better at is embracing the chaos because, well, sometimes there’s just no other choice. We’ve had some pretty heavy construction happening on the road outside our house for the last month or so, meaning we get hit with heavy jackhammering booming through our windows and shaking the floors. Paired with the general craziness of raising a toddler, a corgi who loves to bark at literally anything, and all the other hectic things that come with life, it can be overwhelming. Sometimes not even ambient music can drone out the noise. And, in fact, sometimes trying to mask it with ambient just makes it worse. Sometimes in these moments this last month, I’ve fought fire with fire. Enter YHWH Nailgun’s debut album 45 Pounds. I put off listening to this band for a while because it seemed…stressful. Just from the name alone, it had that vibe. And that assumption was pretty spot on. But when I put this record on in my headphones, I find that it actually does drown out the other noise better than atmospheric ambient music. It’s trading one hectic sound for another, but at least this hectic sound has some truly insane grooves and heavy riffs. Vocalist Zack Borzone has a sort of a latter-day Kim Gordon tonality to his voice, which just sounds so sick against the spastic rhythms the band spews out. Sometimes to fight the noise, you’ve just gotta throw more noise back at it.

READING: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders

I’m still making my way through this book but it’s been such a thrill that I felt like it deserved a shout-out here. I’ve never actually read any of George Saunders’ other work (which I plan to rectify), but I’ve been hearing buzz around this book for a while as a masterclass on writing. And, really, it is a class. Based of a class he gives at Syracuse, Saunders’ book implements several different Russian short stories interspersed with insights and lessons that can be taken from each piece. I have a fondness for Russian literature from the little I’ve read before this. For years in school I’d always heard how difficult but rewarding Russian literature was, but always with an emphasis on “difficult.” I wish I hadn’t taken that part so much to heart and steered away because, while there are challenges with names and such, I’ve found most of what I’ve read to be very accessible. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov blew my mind and I felt like I was breezing through it more than I expected. All this to say, Saunders does a wonderful job of not only just selecting some really great stories, but his lessons are incredibly rewarding in themselves. Often, I find “books on writing” to be tedious at best and unhelpful at worst. Saunders feels self-aware of this and doesn’t claim to have all the “steps to be a better writer.” Instead, he focuses on trying to understand what makes these stories work, and from that, we can internalize lessons for ourselves in our own writing. His humor, wit, and deep knowledge make it feel like I’m just hanging out with a really cool tenured professor. Which, I suppose it what the book really is!

Evergreen Self-Promo: 20th Century Ambient (Pre-Order Now)

“Through text and comics, 20th Century Ambient searches through ambient music's recent history to unearth how the genre has evolved and the role it plays in our daily lives.”

Out November 13, 2025, through Bloomsbury Books.