Paul Simon’s Sounds of Silence tune about a lover who blows through like a spring storm, leaving devastation in her wake, hits so crazy right now.

Simon and Garfunkel, “April, Come She Will” But the chorus, spelled out in English on the 1973 Jobim album - “And the riverbank talks / Of the water of march / It’s the end of the strain / It’s the joy in your heart” - makes me dream of the end of the current troubles. Springtime in the northern hemisphere is actually autumn south of the equator, so really, Brazilian bossa nova titan Antônio Carlos Jobim’s “Águas de Março” (or “Waters of March”) is a song about the wet and cold end of summer rather than winter. He sings it cloyingly cleanly, predicting the coming wave of exquisitely sad ’70s Cali shlock like Albert Hammond’s “It Never Rains in Southern California,” somehow selling sincerity and ironic distance at the same time.

The opener from Brooklyn indie-rock duo Beach House’s 2018 album 7 isn’t necessarily about Earth or any of its seasons, but it’s gorgeous, ominous spring music nevertheless, so it stays.Ĭanadian folkie Gordon Lightfoot’s autobiographical yarn about passing time on rainy days by watching planes come into LAX made its way onto a dozen hit albums, but it’s Bob Dylan’s version, from the loudly reviled 1970 double album Self-Portrait, that takes the cake. Like much of the rest of last year’s excellent Father of the Bride, “Stranger” speaks to a longing for stasis in the face of an uncertain future, and to the comforts of staying home in good company. I hear the chorus to “Stranger” in my head every week or two or three in this era as a sort of Greek-chorus response to some new and unnerving current event. But lean in closer, and “Black Qualls” serves a timely word on fighting off fear and anxiety about the future. On the surface, it’s an instant funk classic bridging multiple generations of talent through guest spots from Donald Glover, the young guitarist Steve Lacy, and funk legend Steve Arrington, formerly of the Dayton, Ohio, hit-making group Slave. The lead single from bass whiz Thundercat’s forthcoming studio album, It Is What It Is, presents a dizzying contradiction in tones.

Upbeat jhene aiko songs