Makeout Music #2 – Spring Fling, or Sap Season

Written by Jenny Hanover

This is a column on Polyvox mag dot com. The column is called Makeout Music, which is indicative of the contents. My name is Jenny Hanover. I’m usually a poet from Pittsburgh, PA. However, I double as a former college music director and kissing connoisseur, so I’m going to be breaking down some of the best albums to kiss to of all time.

Spring is in the air, or at least it feels that way. Here in Pittsburgh, the weather has been on and off but generally sunny and sixty degrees. The spring carries an intangible feeling, a warm breeze and a sudden onslaught of hot people on dating apps and sitting out on sidewalk patios of breweries. This is not the time for a moody tonsil hockey sesh, dear reader.

Let’s say you managed to strike up a conversation with one of those people, one that ended in “do you want to see my bedroom” and a nod of agreement. Let’s say that happened, for the sake of the argument, and now you’re drawing a blank on what auxiliary delights you’re going to cook up to set the mood. When I think back to my first spring makeout, I reflect fondly on Sap Season by Wished Bone.

Wished Bone is an American lo-fi bedroom folk band, the darling of a bygone era at my alma mater, WPTS-FM at the University of Pittsburgh. Sap Season is their most recent full length release, coming out in 2019. Twinkling pianos, soft hand-strummed (possibly nylon string?) guitars and occasional drums make this record dreamy and beautiful, mid-paced and perfect for a springtime kiss.

One thing that I really like about this album, as far as kissing goes, is that it manages to be soft and pretty, maybe even nostalgic, without being trudging and potentially boring. The melodies are sweet, the movement is breezy and gentle, and there are no sudden surprises or tempo changes. It isn’t cheesy or corny, it doesn’t play like a romantic gesture. Now, this album does break one of my previously established rules for good makeout jams- song length. Clocking in at a mere thirty-six minutes with a ten song tracklist, that’s an average three minutes and sixty seconds per song. Not awful, but it’s not putting up numbers in the seven minute range like the last album I talked about.

This is the perfect record for a sweet warm-weather fling, for first times or casual ones, the soundtrack to play when you bike to their house while the sun is setting. This record gets a four-and-a-half out of five star rating. Kiss to this and sit with the sweetness, let it be nothing more and don’t worry about what’s next. Spring hates to linger before summer comes along, so make the most of it.

Best Tracks: Cops, Hold Me, Sarah

Polyvox reader, do you have a great album to kiss to? Email me an album at minajbeach@gmail.com, and I’ll be the judge of that, thanks. Don’t worry- I’ll keep you anonymous.