Sitting on a plowed snow pile in the middle of a dead mall’s parking lot, the sounds of rushing cars bleed over from the highway across the litter-choked, barren tree-lined median. You think you know all there is to know about love, and you and your partner know the universe buckles under the weight of your mutual infatuation. Your car is parked but still running. The grey clouds hang heavy, bloated. Something bigger has to be in store for the both of you someday, right?

Just in time for the summer, I’ve come to share with you a… dead-of-winter playlist. Ennui Potpourri is a playlist that was borne out of a few extras from my last playlist, Winter Jacket Love Letter, that didn’t make the cut. However, this is not a collection of b-sides. This is a different vibe compared to the last collection, although they definitely exist in the same universe (you could say that Ennui Potpourri could be a sequel, or a prequel, to Winter Jacket Love Letter – which you can listen to HERE).

In the scenario for this playlist, I envisioned a pair of lovers (most likely early college, or at least “young-in-brain”), and their budding romance feels larger than life. The setting is a crumbling, post-consumerist world, specifically in the parking lot of an abandoned mall. It’s inspired by news of personal childhood malls shuttering, giant, empty parking lots that are taken up by large plowed snow piles that collect litter and take way too long to melt. It’s about a crush that feels astronomical, every sigh a seismic shift in not only your own body chemistry, but undoubtedly the universe. Will you ever escape this town you were born into? Will months of bleak skies and muted sunsets ever end? How will the world ever comprehend the time and space-bending qualities of our attraction and understanding? Brains hardwired to contemplate love and love only.

Pulling from a pool of classic dream pop tracks by artists like Trailer Trash Tracys, You’ll Never Get To Heaven, Strawberry Switchblade and Insides, along with a little hazy, jangly material by Black Tambourine and others, makes for a selection I feel like works well if you’re feeling very tender and emotional about a syrupy infatuation. Going a bit deeper into the setting, it also works if you’re feeling disillusioned about the current state of capitalism (and nostalgic for the versions of capitalism of your youth, aka going to malls with friends), the death of malls and in-person interactions, the loss of tactile examination of material goods before you buy them and potentially the environmental impacts we’re being faced with right now because of this overwhelming, planet-killing reliance on online shopping. The death of small towns. The fact that most towns and cities are purely covered by gargantuan parking lots, and what that means for the environment. A shitty cyberpunk future of asphalt. But really it’s about love. If that all sounds up your alley (as of posting, May 2024), then go right ahead and press play.

Listen to Ennui Potpourri via Spotify HERE.

1. Black Tambourine – “Black Car”
2. Somesurprises – “Why I Stay”
3. Cold Beat – “Double Sided Mirror”
4. Marina Zispin – “Surprise Party”
5. Paycheque – “When You Are Around”
6. Trailer Trash Tracys – “Candy Girl”
7. Cindy – “I Love You”
8. Ashrae Fax – “In Motion”
9. Sleep ∞ Over – “Romantic Streams”
10. You’ll Never Get To Heaven – “Beyond The Clouds”
11. Insides – “Darling Effect”
12. ML Buch – “Working it out”
13. Low – “Lord, Can You Hear Me?”
14. Dissolve – “Presume Too Far”
15. Brittle Stars – “Souvenir”
16. Shallowhalo – “Late Bloomer (feat. May Rio)”
17. Strawberry Switchblade – “Who Knows What Love Is?
18. Princ€ss – “Point of View”
19. Spike Fuck – “3:30 Psychosis”
20. Amen Dunes – “Bedroom Drum”
21. Cindy Lee – “Heavy Metal”
22. Merchandise – “I’ll Be Gone”
23. Northern Picture Library – “Catholic Easter Colours”
24. Hydroplane – “City Terminus”
25. Primitive Radio Gods – “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand”