Tim: Clocks have gone back, November’s almost here and it really is remarkably cold outside, so let’s have this. The title translates to, well, exactly what you can guess it does.
Tom: It is too early for Christmas songs, Tim, and this feels worryingly like a Christmas song. Albeit one with a bizarre theremin in the middle eight.
Tim: True, though I’d argue it’s very much more a winter song than a Christmas song – no sleigh bells, for starters. No lyrics I can provide either, I’m afraid, so I don’t know if this is actually about the changing seasons or some metaphor for falling out of love, or if she’s just a particularly obsessive Game of Thrones fan. I’ll go with the first, partly through Occam’s Razor but mostly just because the sound fits in with that very well – all misty and atmospheric and conjuring images of snow capped forests.
Tom: It’s a lovely song but — and this is where I get controversial — I don’t think it’s good pop. It sounds like a folk song, or even a nursery rhyme, done by a slightly experimental band.
Tim: I wouldn’t say that’s controversial at all — it’d certainly struggle for inclusion on most pop radio stations’ playlists, for starters. A haunting vocal, rolling across the hills, reassuring and chilling at the same time, aided of course by the instrumental – particularly that ‘bizarre theremin’. Experimental maybe, but also quite lovely.