Summer in winter: Hutch’s bottled sunshine playlist
For those in the northern hemisphere, January has once again proven to be the most depressing time of the year. But as February dawns perhaps we have a small glimmer of hope for you.
No warmth, barely any sun, short days, long cold nights, there’s limited fun to be had, and even less vitamin D. The only hope is to try and bottle that summer feeling in whatever way you possibly can and from their seaside home of Brighton, Hutch have managed it.
When you see that a band has released a song called ‘Mrs Sunshine’ in January, it can feel like a cruel and taunting joke, as if they’re rubbing it in our stupid little faces while the sun sets at 16:00 and temperatures barely rise above freezing. But with their own brand of twang pop, Hutch have pulled it off; a rare moment where if you close your eyes and imagine hard enough, you can just about remember what it feels like to have the warmth of the sunlight kiss your skin.
Three and a half minutes isn’t enough though, we need a longer fix, so Hutch themselves shared a playlist of tracks that do just that, holding onto that sunshine feeling to get us through the depths of winter.
The heat doesn’t just come from one genre. For singer JP, it’s a range. Margo Guryan’s music is quite literally labelled sunshine pop so it makes sense that her track ‘Take a Picture’ captures a slice of nicer weather with a specific scene: “I’m in a park: my head on some plaid picnic basket, my eyes feeling a cloudless sky watch over me with a brush of its breezy hand. In the distance I have friends talking. Flutes and strings and piano. The sentiment of this song makes my heart feel full: I want to remember this moment just as it is.” It’s a song that seems to give him the wisdom, “Sometimes when the sun is shining, the best thing to do is nothing much at all except enjoy it”.
But from the opposite end of Guryan’s sweetness, his picks range towards Babe Rainbow’s alt-indie sound, describing their tune ‘Secret Enchanted Broccoli Forest’ as “a scorching sun melting me on a hot pavement” and noting “this song may have been the foundation to our mix-tempo-playing”. However, he also picks out The Beatles’ silly psychedelic track ‘Baby, You’re a Rich Man’ as the Magical Mystery Tour era was surely sunshine bottled with an amount of acid that can cut through any grey clouds.
Passing the mic to bassist Charlie Bogg, things get more eclectic. Picking out ‘GABRIELLE and Wookie’s ‘Sunshine’, that tune conjures up a scene for him too. “This song creates a sense of nostalgia in me much like the feeling of school being out for summer. Every time I listen to it it reminds me of being a kid and how simple, optimistic and easy life can be,” he said, and we can almost hear that final school bell ring. As another pick, he says The Gap Band’s ‘Outstanding’ should come with a sunscreen warning, telling us, “The sun is beaming like a beacon saying, ‘Hell yeah, don’t worry I got you guys, I’m gonna stay right here all day’”.
Turning the temperature of the playlist up again, and making this bottled sunshine more and more eclectic, drummer Owen Bullock picks out some more nostalgia with Mac DeMarco’s ‘Annie’ and the memory of a “sun-drenched summer of 2015, when the days seemed to be endless and the dark fruits flowed like… dark fruits”, or Of Montreal’s ‘Happy Yellow Bumble Bee’ and the memory of his first summer living in Brighton.
For co-vocalist and guitarist Dan Shepherd, a sunny song is proven to be the ultimate antidote as his pick of Morgan Delt’s ‘Some Sunsick Day’ captures the “strange, long, hot summer of 2020. “Would the world crumble around me? Would this be the sixth extinction event that would eventually be studied by the next species to inhabit our planet? Will I ever get to see my friends again? These were all questions rolling around inside my megadome,” he recalled, but there was always an antidote. “In these moments, when the big questions felt too big Morgan Delt’s ‘Some Sunsick Day’ would fill me up with warm optimism and allow for pseudo-psychedelic escapism,” he added.
From rock and roll to shoegaze to disco to indie to folk and well beyond, capturing nostalgia and warm memories from all directions, there’s a good dose of vitamin D in all these tracks handpicked by Hutch. Cobbled together in an attempt to help us all get through, they recommend putting the heating on and hitting play on their playlist, “Best served warm; enjoy!”
Hutch’s sunshine in winter playlist:
- ‘Secret Enchanted Broccoli Forrest’ – Babe Rainbow
- ‘Baby, You’re a Rich Man’ – The Beatles
- ‘Take a Picture’ – Margo Guryan
- ‘Smiling Ladies’ – Heron
- ‘Home On Home’ – The Lijadu Sisters
- ‘Sandy Toes’ – Linda Perhacs
- ‘Baby’ – Os Mutantes
- ‘Happy Yellow Bumble Bee’ – Of Montreal
- ‘Annie’ – Mac DeMarco
- ‘Outstanding’ – The Gap Band
- ‘Sunshine’ – GABRIELLE and Wookie
- ‘Mas, Que Nada!’ – Jorge Ben Jor
- ‘Some Sunsick Day’ – Morgan Delt
- ‘Les Fleurs’ – Minnie Riperton
- ‘Under The Sun’ – DIIV
