It’s that time of year when those of us who live in northern climes hibernate and embrace being shut in an effort to stave off cabin fever. It’s is a time when I go back to music I’d abandoned during sunnier, more fun-filled months and rediscover it. From the nest of blankets and pillows I made near the radiator.

One of my old winter standbys is The Durutti Column’s debut, the curiously titled Return of the Durutti Column. Recorded in Manchester and released by Factory Records during the heyday of the signature Manchester post-punk sound, alongside more aggressive releases from the likes Joy Division and A Certain Ratio, its calm and quiet melodic turn seemed almost more of a punk gesture than another Unknown Pleasures would have been. The virtuosity of guitarist Vini Reilly is the album’s real centerpiece, but legendary Factory producer Martin Hannett’s heavy hand in the album is evident in the synth parts he wrote for it and its layers of Hannett’s signature icy reverb. “Sleep Will Come” closes just about every playlist I’ve made in the past month.

This time of year, I like to hear music that draws from a darker sonic palette, to match my mood. Finding myself obsessed with Liars’ latest, I saw fit to go back to They Were Wrong So We Drowned and listen with my winter ears. While it admittedly is more of an autumn album, with its allusions to witch hunts and pilgrims and some sort of amorphous evil presence lurking in the woods, songs like “They Don’t Want Your Corn, They Want Your Kids” have just the kind of death disco armchair dance-rockability that resonates with my seratonin-deprived brain in late February.

From Liars it’s a fairly straight and narrow trajectory backward to krautrock staples Neu! While Neu!’s self-titled debut is more of a springtime album for me, Neu! 2 has been hitting the German psychedelia spot this week. In a now famous moment in krautrock history, Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother sat down to start working on the follow up to their debut, almost nothing went right. The album’s nocturnal feeling, as deliberate an aesthetic choice as it may sound now, is actually the product of endless arguments about direction and failed compromises. Running out of steam and their meager budget midway into the proceedings, Neu! did what anyone would do—remixed most of what they’d recorded for the first half of the album, variously slowing down and speeding up prerecorded material and slapping different titles on it. “Neueschnee 78” (New Snow 78), one of these sped up tracks, evokes images of a pretty German snowstorm. Or something.

Hang in there. It’s almost over.

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