Picture Parlour – ‘The Parlour’

The good thing about bands like Picture Parlour is that their music doesn’t restrict itself to one specific season, as The Parlour is a record which is good all year round. That being said, the powerful vocals, shredding and glimmering guitar, and affinity for major chords all lead to an album which certainly has whispers of spring embedded into every single note.

This is the kind of record you can play in your earphones the first time you go for that morning spring walk. You know the kind? They’ve been missed dearly, as the sun sits prominently in the sky and your shoes hit cobbles before you’ve even had to ponder the world of work. Start spring right with a band like Picture Parlour.

English Teacher – ‘This Could Be Texas’

I’d say about half of the tracks on this album sound like sunrise, even if they’re set during the night, as the calm nature of the instrumentation, paired with soft spoken word and hauntingly beautiful vocals are incredibly soothing, and they make for a great piece of music to listen to the moment the days get longer and the mornings look brighter.

The Leeds band completely took the indie and post-punk world by storm with their debut album This Could Be Texas, which would go on to earn them a Mercury Award. If you want poetry paired with great musicianship, there really is nowhere better to turn. It could be Texas, but it’s definitely spring.

Tyler Ballgame – ‘For The First Time, Again’

Folk, rock, indie, all projected with beautiful vocals and intricate melodies, it’s pretty wonderful to listen to, and as the oranges on the cover of the album suggest, it’s a record that invokes feelings of spring. Tyler Ballgame, with his debut, has cemented himself as one of the most exciting and emotive songwriters around at the moment, and his sound is the perfect backdrop for these longer days.

“This album changed my life in so many ways, and it was really my birth as a full-time artist,” said Ballgame in an interview with Northern Transmissions, “Now it’s being handed over, and hopefully it will become part of people’s lives, you know? Just like all my favourite music, which is such a big part of me.”

Gilberto Gil – ‘Luar’

The word transportive is used a lot when we talk about music, but there is no doubt that a lot of different albums can help when it comes to allowing listeners to truly escape. Gilberto Gil’s record Luar is a great example of as much, as the moment you put it on, no matter where in the world you’re listening, you will find yourself immediately taken to somewhere filled with sun and serene beauty.

This is the ultimate no-skip album. The fusion of songs here means that tracks don’t stand out as individual pieces of work, and instead contribute towards the overarching feature, which is the record. Give in to the transportive nature of music and allow Gil to take you somewhere that truly embodies spring with this record.

Theodor – ‘Holocene’

When people first started making psychedelic music, they did so with the intention of trying to make something layered and experimental. Now, that’s all well and good, but the issue that some artists faced when doing this is that they made it too experimental, to the point that it was completely inaccessible.

Over the past few decades, psychedelic music has evolved so that it can be better implemented and understood by artists. This style, which originally made a name for itself in rock, can now be applied to sounds like funk and soul, which is exactly what Theodor does on the record Holocene. Talk about a psychedelic soul LP for the ages, this is an album that you simply can’t miss, and that invokes the sensation of spring sweetly.

Big Thief – ‘Double Infinity’

Big Thief is proving itself to be a band incapable of releasing a bad song, as with every album, I let the tracklist run down while waiting for the moment for the one that doesn’t hit the mark, and it still hasn’t come. Their most recent record, Double Infinity, proved to be another triumph, and it’s one that sounds like a spring evening spent with friends.

Listening to tracks like ‘Los Angeles’ undebatably sounds like sitting on a picnic blanket on a spring evening, and whether or not this was the band’s intention with the song, that’s what they’ve tapped into, landing them squarely on this list.

Led Zeppelin – ‘Led Zeppelin IV’

When Jack Black was trying to convince people to listen to Led Zeppelin, he said the best way to appreciate them is to listen to every record they’ve ever put out, gushing, “Led Zeppelin…the greatest rock and roll band of all time. Better than The Beatles, better than The [Rolling] Stones. And if you don’t agree with me, that’s because you haven’t done the Zeppelin marathon. It’s when you sit your ass down and listen to all nine Zeppelin albums in a row.”

This might sound like a tall order, but when you sit down and actually listen to the different records that Led Zeppelin put out, you realise that different seasons can be assigned to all the albums, and in the case of Led Zeppelin IV, the season is spring, with songs like ‘Going to California’, ‘The Battle of Evermore’ and ‘Rock and Roll’ begging for glimmers of sunshine.

Eagles – ‘Eagles’

Eagles skyrocketed to fame when they first introduced the world to the magic of country rock. While some of their most popular music leaned heavily on the rock side of things on records such as Hotel California, the band’s self-titled debut is much more stripped back and is more representative of their country origins.

Because of this heavy reliance on country, the music is perfect for those spring days, where you can just imagine the morning sun bleeding through the curtains of a beautiful spring day while a track like ‘Take It Easy’ starts playing; this is truly an album that lends itself to a certain time of year.

Tyler, the Creator – ‘Flower Boy’

A lot of Tyler, the Creator fans will know how much of a turning point Flower Boy was for the rapper. While his previous records were delivered to a high quality and well received by listeners everywhere, there is no escaping the fact that Flower Boy, in its conceptual nature and pop leanings, took Tyler to a whole new mainstream audience.

Flowers aren’t just in the title; they’re wrapped around the lyrics and melody, infusing each line of each song with something that well and truly sounds like spring. Even when Tyler is rapping aggressively on this album, it still provides a backdrop which gives listeners an inclination that better days are around the corner.

Tame Impala – ‘Currents’

Back to that psychedelic music that we all know and love. Because of the layered nature of psychedelia, how bands and artists tend to pile synths on top of guitars and vice versa, they can have a real elevating feeling to them, and that’s what makes us associate such a sound with the outdoors and spring.

One of the best examples of this sensation is Currents by Tame Impala, an album that comes with such a heavy atmosphere you could eat it like soup. It’s maybe not a record for spring days, but for those light nights, when the sun is steadily making a retreat but the evening is nice enough to sit in, put on Currents and let yourself be swept away.