#midwinter swimmers

[inthewindtunnel]

The Innocence Mission

Midwinter Swimmers

[dustedmagazine]

The Innocence Mission — Midwinter Swimmers (Bella Union/Thérèse)

Karen Peris sings in a piercing way that is also very soft. She draws you in with whispered confidences, the kind of intimate communication that stirs the little hairs in your ears. She mouths the words with a little slur, a slide, a lisp, so that you think of little children singing for joy, but the words themselves are complex and elusive, adult meditations couched in girlish simplicity. You’ll hear and connect with her voice first when you listen to the Innocence Mission, before you strain for the lyrics, before you catch on to the 1960s pop rock sway of the instrumentals. The voice comes first because it is so unusual, curling up like a kitten, fluttering away like a fledgling bird.

The Innocence Mission has been around for three decades. Formed around a couple — the now long married Karen and Don Peris — the band had a big major label start, recording their first three records on A&M. As the 1990s wore on, prospects for commercial dominance dimmed, but the band kept making music, on indies and self-release labels; Peris even recorded a charming children’s record in 2021, A Song Is Above the Lawn. This one is Innocence Mission’s 13th full-length, and it is a beauty, full of wistful dream pop arrangements and insurgent melodies that seem slight until you try to stop humming them.  

Consider, the opener, “Thread Is a Green Street.” It’s a 1960s-style girl ballad that might remind you of Vashti Bunyan’s Andrew Loog Oldham dalliance “Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind.” Both frame fragile, girlish voices in expansive settings, Vashti’s hemmed in by thumping percussion and brass, Peris’ by slow strummed guitars, slack tambourines and lots of echo. Peris is vulnerable and tender, a luminous spirit in cavernous space, yet when the light comes in near the end, in a billowing crescendo, she continues to outshine her surroundings.

The music has the same baroque pop lilt as the Clientele, a light touch but not exactly simple. Every element is sharp and distinct, the clatter of drums, the radiance of keyboards, the gentle buoyance of guitar, and yet they jostle together softly, a tipsy balance of exactitude and blurry grace. You might also draw parallels to Jessica Pratt’s urbane songcraft, though there’s a wide-eyed wonder in these songs that’s very different from Pratt’s knowing sophistication. Indeed, after half a lifetime in the music business, the Innocence Mission delivers its tunes with an uncalculated freshness, still innocent, even now.

Jennifer Kelly

[torchwood-99]

Headcanon

Rohan being a northern country, landlocked and very cold, they don't go into recreational swimming all that much. Staying warm is important, and filling up bath tubs laborious and timely, so full on baths are avoided. They wash, but they wash quickly with a bowl of hot water, soap and cloth, and in winter they try to do so partly dressed. Not out of modesty, but out of a deep, justified, dislike of the cold. Bathing and swimming aren't leisure activities, but necessities they try to avoid as much as possible.

The lack of bathing is one of the things that Lothiriel struggles to adjust to, as it's a luxury she's used to in Dol Amroth. Swimming she refuses to give up, she goes swimming in the Snowbourn. Everyone tells her it's far too cold, but she actually goes in for winter swimming, and takes part in the annual Midwinter Swim. Cold water swimming is something the people of Dol Amroth actually think is good for the constitution.

The people of Rohan think that she's bonkers, but in a good way. The willingness of a seemingly pampered, coddled Southern Princess to dive into freezing waters for a bit of a laugh breaks the ice between them, and she starts a new fashion.

Rohan does have a tradition of sweat lodges and saunas, but the sweat lodge in Edoras has fallen into disrepair and has been on the bottom of the list to be fixed. After marrying Lothiriel, Eomer sets about getting it done up again, so she can use it after her swims, and to take the place of her daily baths.

Meanwhile, Eowyn struggles getting over her ingrained distrust of the cold and wet. Ithilien has natural hot springs, perfect for swimming, and Gimli designs Eowyn and Faramir's house in Emyn Arnen to make it easy to keep warm and transport heated water to have baths in, but Eowyn still insists that regular bathing is unhealthy, having been taught to believe so her entire life. Especially in winter.

Faramir loves swimming, something he inherited from his mother, and offers to teach Eowyn to swim, seeing her reluctance. Eowyn objects to this. She knows how to swim; actually, Theodred taught her and Eomer to swim in the traditional Rohan way, throwing them in the water and leaving them to it (obviously on hand with other strong swimmers in case it looks like they're in trouble, but the people of Rohan are believers in the "sink or swim" teaching method), she just doesn't like to. People aren't fishes, and should stay out of water excepting drastic circumstances.

It's quite amusing for Faramir and his staff to see Eowyn taking measures to stay warm and dry in winter, that make sense in northern Rohan, but are a bit overboard in the (comparatively) mild Ithilien winters.

[musicwithoutborders]

The Innocence Mission, This Thread is a Green Street I Midwinter Swimmers, 2024

[elesianne]

So I did manage to finish a little fic (or a chapter of a fic, if inspiration keeps coming and I write more later) in 2023! Here it is for you guys on Tumblr.

About a version of Caranthir who married a Sindarin woman in Beleriand while lord of Thargelion; technically a sequel to these fics but can be read on its own, no problem. Rating G.

Caranthir steps out of his fortress as dusk gives way to night and walk to the ramparts, to the ones that face the frozen, snow-covered dark waters of Lake Helevorn. He walks very carefully on the icy stone on top of the wall, cradling close to him the precious bundle he carries.

It is midwinter, and his son is so swaddled up in warm clothes and furs that only his face is visible. All the guards Caranthir passes try peer at the child anyway, eager to catch of a glimpse of their lord's firstborn. Aramdir blinks up at the sky, sleepy, unaware of the interest in him.

In between greeting the guards, Caranthir takes deep breaths of the fresh, cold air that smells of coming snow as well as woodsmoke. He has not been outside since Aramdir was born a week ago. He has been supporting Cedweril and caring for Aramdir, and the past week has been perhaps the best time of his  life, but he has missed fresh air and seeing more of his realm than the bedchamber.

Cedweril is sleeping deeply now, and Caranthir decided to take Aramdir out with him to show him more of the world he was born into.

He stops by a brazier, close enough to warm him and Aramdir but not so close it'll be uncomfortable for the child, he hopes.

He lifts Aramdir a little, showing him the land. The lake, the woods beyond it, the mountains behind the fortress.

'All this is ours', he says to him. He speaks quietly enough for the closest guards not to hear. 'Ours to keep and protect.'

'It is a rather cold land, windy and snowy. Wolves from the mountains, ice in the lake for months of the year. But it is a fair land, even the dark lake. I will teach you to swim there, or your mother will. She is a better swimmer than I. We will ride and hunt in the forest, and climb the mountains, and I will take you to meet the dwarves near their mountain-cities.'

If he ever prayed, Caranthir would pray for peaceful times for his son to grow up in. Instead he makes a silent vow to do all he can to make the coming years peaceful, to fight as many battles as he has to, to slay all the monsters that creep close to the fortress.

His son's will not be a childhood like his was, with tree-light and six brothers and a society wholly unlike what Caranthir has built in Thargelion with his loyal Noldor and his brave Sindar, but it still can be a good one.

Caranthir has to believe so. He may be damned and oath-sworn, but his son isn't him and isn't doomed – surely he cannot be – his half-Noldorin, half-Sindarin son born many years after Mandos's doom. Little Aramdir is his own person, full of possibilities, full of light that Caranthir can see shine brighter than starlight even though his eyes don't shine with the light of the Trees like Caranthir's do.

As he stands there in the cold, clear, evening with his son, they watch the stars come out. The stars and their light, cool but beloved and reassuring, have ever been there even for the banished Noldor. After the trees were gone and before the sun and moon rose, the stars brought light and hope to the world. In spite of everything the Noldor had done, the stars lit their way as they travelled and fought and hunted to keep away evil and hunger and hopelessness alike.

The lord of Thargelion whispers to his child, 'May starlight always light your path, my son, whatever roads and hidden paths of the world you take.'

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[From the opening of A Field Guide to Getting Lost]

l.  Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That's where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go. Three  years ago I was giving a workshop in the Rockies. A student came in bearing a quote from what she said was the pre-Socratic philosopher Meno. It read, "How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?" I copied it down, and it has stayed with me since. The student made big transparent photographs of swimmers underwater and hung them from the ceiling with the light shining through them, so that to walk among them was to have the shadows of swimmers travel across your body in a space that itself came to seem aquatic and mysterious. 

The question she carried struck me as the basic tactical question in life. The things we want are transformative, and we don't know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration—how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?  

Certainly for artists of all stripes, the unknown, the idea or the form or the tale that has not yet arrived, is what must be found. It is the job of artists to open doors and invite in prophesies, the unknown, the unfamiliar; it's where their work comes from, although its arrival signals the beginning of the long disciplined process of making it their own. Scientists too, as J. Robert Oppenheimer once remarked, "live always at the 'edge of mystery'—the boundary of the unknown." 

But they transform the unknown into the known, haul it in like fishermen; artists get you out into that dark sea. Edgar Allan Poe declared, "All experience, in matters of philosophical discovery, teaches us that, in such discovery, it is the unforeseen upon which we must calculate most largely." Poe is consciously juxtaposing the word “calculate,” which implies a cold counting up of the facts or measurements, with “he unforeseen, that which cannot be measured or counted, only anticipated. How do you calculate upon the unforeseen?

It seems to be an art of recognizing the role of the unforeseen, of keeping your balance amid surprises, of collaborating with chance, of recognizing that there are some essential mysteries in the world and thereby a limit to calcuation, to plan, to control. To leave the door open. To calculate on the unforeseen is perhaps exactly the paradoxical operation that life most requires of us. 

On a celebrated midwinter's night in 1817 the poet John Keats walked home talking with some friends “and several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature.… I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” 

One way or another this notion occurs over and over again, like the spots labeled “terra incognita” on old maps. “Not to find one's way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance—nothing more," says the twentieth-century philosopher-essayist Walter Benjamin. "But to lose oneself in a city—as one loses oneself in a forest—that calls for quite a different schooling." 

To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away. In Benjamin's terms, to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender, a psychic state achievable through geography.

[Thanks to Rebecca Solnit]

[identity-library]

Disability (Web Series)

A:

Apricot Cookie(s)! (Web Comic)

Sunshine Jubilee (Unspecified Disability, Wheelchair User)

B:

Batman: Wayne Family Adventures (Webtoon)

Barbara Gordon/Oracle (Paralyzed Wheelchair User)

Bugtopia (Webtoon)

Chestnut (Blind)

Tera (Amputee)

C:

Castle Swimmer (Webtoon)

Mono (Mute)

Nethimir (Amputee)

Silver (Blind, Limited Mobility)

Critical Role (Web Series)

Ashton Greymoore (Chronic Pain)

D:

E:

Echo (Webtoon)

Echo Dreia (Selective Mutism)

Emara (YouTube)

Dhabian (Amputee, Wheelchair User)

Epithet Erased (YouTube)

Mera Salamin (Chronic Pain)

Eyes (Webtoon)

Juan Seo (Partially Blind)

F:

Flawless (Webtoon)

Elios Zanquen (Blind)

G:

H:

Helluva Boss (YouTube)

Fizzarolli (Multi-Limb Amputee)

High Class Homos (Webtoon)

Princess Sapphia (Amputee)

Homestuck (Web Comic)

Caliborn (Amputee)

Lord English (Amputee)

Mindfang (Amputee, Partially Blind)

Sollux Captor (Blind)

Spades Slick (Amputee, Partially Blind)

Tavros Nitram (Paralyzed, Wheelchair)

Terezi Pyrope (Blind)

Vriska Serket (Amputee, Partially Blind)

How to Become a Dragon (Webtoon)

Yeongno (Partially Blind)

I:

In the Bleak Midwinter (Webtoon)

Ivan (Facial Difference)

Misha (Diabetes)

It's Mine (Webtoon)

Hyuna Lee (Cancer, Wheelchair User)

J:

K:

L:

Leif & Thorn (Web Comic)

Agent D10 (Ocular Albinism)

Birch Persil (Amputee)

Calyx Carvi (Unspecified Disabilities)

Cress Fenouil (Vitiligo)

Cyan (Amputee)

Hawthorn Lavande (Autistic [Changeling Syndrome])

Hazel Cherieshnya (Joint Inflammation)

Hermosa Zikos (Brain Damage)

Iona Nibelungsen (Limb Difference)

Lupine Lavande (Autistic [Changeling Syndrome])

Patotara Kaihanga (Mute - Vocal Cord Paralysis)

Patrik Gagarr (Amputee)

Thorn Estragon (Limited Mobility)

Torsten (Hand Tremors)

Vainø Svansson (Deaf)

Let's Play (Webtoon)

Olivia (Deaf, Mute)

Sam Young (Asthma)

M:

Monster Pulse (Web Comic)

Abel Elizondo (Partially Blind)

Ned McNulty (Amputee)

Ozzy Dieter (Hard of Hearing)

Roger Maugras Sr. (Amputee)

Sophie (Amputee)

Rixis (Limited Mobility*)

Mystery Skulls Animated (YouTube)

Arthur Kingsmen (Amputee)

N:

Nevermore (Webtoon)

Lenore Vandernacht (Unspecified Disability, Cane User)

O:

Out of the Blue (Webtoon)

Felix (Blind)

P:

Postcards in Braille (Tapas)

Sigma (Blind)

Q:

R:

Rebirth (Webtoon)

Noah Collins (Unspecified Chronic Illnesses)

Red Comet Drive (Tapas)

Ceta (Double Amputee, Wheelchair User)

S:

Serious Trans Vibes (Webtoon)

Stephanie "Stephie" Bondu (Autistic)

Sharp Zero (Tapas)

Daniel Becket (Autistic)

Elliot Hong (ADHD)

Sleepless Domain (Web Comic)

Pop Blitz (Amputee)

Spaceboy (Webtoon)

Amy (Synesthesia)

Sunflowers and Lavender (Tapas)

Gabe (Amputee)

Georgie (Autistic)

T:

The Angel in the Forest (Webtoon)

Eliot (Partially Blind)

Montimer (Limited Mobility)

Richie (Limb Difference, Limited Mobility)

The Blind Prince (Webtoon)

Sebastian (Blind)

The Friendly Winter (Webtoon)

Da-Jeong Han (Dwarfism)

Min-Seong (Intellectual Disability)

The Guild (Web Show)

Venom (Paralyzed)

The Mysqueery Gang (Webtoon)

Archie (Chronic Pain, Cane User)

Rash (ADHD)

Total Drama Next Generation (YouTube)

Kevin (Dyslexia)

Steven (Unspecified Disability, Wheelchair User)

U:

V:

Vampair (YouTube)

Duke (Amputee)

Melissa "Missi" Dumarias (Missing Eye, Partially Blind)

Vindicaris (Tapas/Webtoon)

Arbo (Amputee)

Sel (Amputee)

W:

Watermelon (Webtoon)

Ban (Amputee)

Doran (Blind)

Luna (Unspecified Chronic Illness)

Simon (Unspecified Chronic Illness)

Woven (Webtoon)

Ayşe (Blind)

X:

Y:

Z:

[theam-cjsw]

The AM: January 27, 2025

Your guide to a good morning: start off cosmic, with electronic experiments and soul-jazz explorations for the new new age. Let things come into focus through patient post-rock crescendos. Then the day begins with psych-pop, indie rock, and other eclectic jams. If it's working, don't change the formula.

Listening links and track listing are below. Hope you enjoy it, and see you again in February.

Hour One:

Music Travel III Memory Pearl, featuring Sam Prekop and Mortiz Fasbender • Cosmic-Astral

Pillar IV - Mantra Major Force Moon Apple • Pillar IV

Heart of the Ocean Dissolve in Sepia • And Also

Modul Vier III Prepared • Module

Hot Mic Peace Flag Ensemble • Everything Is Possible

Oh My Actual Days Alabaster DePlume • A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole

Steps Justin Walter • Bird Higher Than Cloud

Something About Us Wayne Patrick Garrett • Marine Life

Cold, Cold Night Yasu Cub • Cold, cold night

A Celebration with Genever Applesauce Tears • Balcony Confidential

Moog Rich Aucoin • Synthetic: Season 3

Hour Two:

Cocoon Avi C. Engel • Nocturne (Soundtrack for an Invisible Film)

Margate Sands Minor Conflict • Parallels EP

Orange of the Westering Sun The Innocence Mission • Midwinter Swimmer

Moving Home Human Pyramids • Thank You

Mombassadorf Ellis Island Sound • Divisions

Nuevo Bell Orchestre • Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light

Throw It on a Fire Bell Orchestre • Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light

Horses in the Sky Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra La La La Band • Horses in the Sky

Pale Vegan Hip Pain Mogwai • The Bad Fire

Hour Three:

Je Reste Laura Cahen • De l’autre côté

Früh Feed LA • Feed LA

I Am the Occupation Mary Ocher • Your Guide to Revolution

Au Commencement Omertà • Collection particulière

Where Did You Go Robert Ascroft • Echo Still Remains

All I Need Blackwater Holylight • Single

Nature Bluffing • Nature EP

Farsh Cliché Toupee • Endlessly Continuous

Let the Moon Get Into It Soft Location • Diamonds and Gems

Stirrings MALLED • Eye Heards

Salvation Holy Void • All Will Be Revealed In Time

[album-a-day-project]

1/9/25

The Innocence Mission

Midwinter Swimmers

====

From Lancaster Pennsylvania. This is the first I've heard of them, but this is their 13th album. The have been making music since their 80s and released their first album in 1989. Incredibly impressive alone in that sense. Folksy light listening that is incredibly produced. Certainly my favorite album so far and one that I'll continue to go back to this year.

AAD Recommends: 89%

[elogehakizimana]

BEST MUSIC 2025

Best Albums

MIKE - Showbiz! - (8.5)

Bad Bunny - Debí Tirar Más Fotos - (8.2)

Boldy James / RichGains - Murder During Drug Traffic - (8)

The Weather Station - Humanhood - (8)

Ela Minus - DÍA - (8)

Kathryn Mohr - Waiting Room - (8)

FKA twigs - Eusexua - (8)

The Innocence Mission - Midwinter Swimmers - (7.9)

Boldy James - Permanent Ink - (7.8)

Benjamin Booker - LOWER - (7.5)

Zach Phillips - True Music - (7.4)

Rio Da Yung OG - RIO FREE - (7.3)

Franz Ferdinand - The Human Fear - (7.2)

Good Sad Happy Bad - All Kinds of Days - (7)

...

Best Tracks

Bad Bunny - BAILE INoLVIDABLE

Boldy James, RichGains - Custo

MIKE - man in the mirror

The Weather Station - Neon Signs

Deafheaven - Magnolia

The Innocence Mission - John Williams

Rio Da Yung OG - Shake Back

Zach Phillips - I Care

Perfume Genius - It's A Mirror

Boldy James, RichGains - Days Go By

...

[lairdete]

midwinter swimmers

[yellowsnow77]

The Innocence Mission - Midwinter Swimmers

Hay muy pocas bandas capaces de sobrevivir a casi cuatro décadas desde la más absoluta independencia y cambiando muy poco su forma de hacer música. Algo que han conseguido con enorme facilidad The Innocence Mission. El grupo formado por Karen Peris, su marido, Don Peris, y su viejo amigo de la adolescencia, Mike Bitts, tiene su punto de partida en un lejano 1986. Desde entonces, se han hecho con…

[americanahighways]

REVIEW: The Innocence Mission “Midwinter Swimmers”

REVIEW: The Innocence Mission “Midwinter Swimmers” @theinnocencemission @americanahighways #americanamusic #americanahighways #midwinterswimmers #johnapice #musicreviews #newmusic2024

The Innocence Mission – Midwinter Swimmers It’s been 35 years since the first Innocence Mission graced our speakers. It’s not wild stuff like Heart, Blondie, or even Dead Can Dance — but based more on an expressive, ambient, emotional & poignant realm. Popular with the indie-alterative-pop scene. The Innocent Mission progressed & continues to provide a gossamer of stylistically woven melodies…

[musikblog]

https://www.musikblog.de/2024/11/the-innocence-mission-midwinter-swimmers/ Eisbaden scheint ja voll im Trend zu sein. Das erfordert jede Menge Durchhaltevermögen. So wie bei The Innocence Mission aus Lancaster in Pennsylvania, die ihr aktuelles Album „Midwinter Swimmers“  betiteln. Seit nunmehr 35 Jahren musiziert das Quartett gemeinsam und klingt dabei noch immer wie noch ältere Bands. Da kommen einen z.B. The Mamas & The […]

[parkerbombshell]

Strange Fruit Nov 10

Strange Fruit 10pm EST bombshellradio.com Archival Shows available on bombshellradiopodcasts.com Strange Fruit (10-midnight EST) celebrates the greatest achievement of the Fallen, the one album that hauled Britain’s permanent outsiders into the top ten albums for a week and amounts to the most accessible moment in a mighty legacy. Elsewhere, we’ll be long dreaming, briefly launching the Led Zeppelin, and taking instructions from the English Teacher. We’re here because there are discerning listeners to be found; join us: (https://bombshellradio.com). 1. **Emma Anderson** - *Willow and Mallow (Daniel Hunt Remix)* 2. **The Heavy Heavy** - *Wild Emotion* 3. **Los Pakines** - *Venus* 4. **The Fall** - *A Past Gone Mad* 5. **The Fall** - *Lost in Music (Mix 7)* 6. **Citron Citron** - *Par un Temps Pareil* 7. **Jane Weaver** - *Univers (French Version)* 8. **The Grateful Dead** - *Dark Star* 9. **Kieran White** - *Dark Star* 10. **The Fall** - *The League of Bald-Headed Men* 11. **The Fall** - *15 Ways (Mark Goodier Session)* 12. **Led Zeppelin** - *The Crunge* 13. **Jodie Lowther** - *Long Dreaming* 14. **Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp** - *Breath (Happy 5)* 15. **English Teacher** - *I’m not Crying, You’re Crying* 16. **Ayom ft. Paulo Flores** - *Kikola N’Goma* 17. **Haujobb** - *Mass (Tribute)* 18. **Night Nail** - *I’m Not Her God (A State of Flux Remix)* 19. **Aztlan Unearthed** - *To Walk in All Beauty* 20. **The Innocence Mission** - *Midwinter Swimmers* 21. **Mapaná Music** - *Serpiente Arcoiris* 22. **The Fall** - *Ladybird (Green Grass)* 23. **The Fall** - *Service (John Peel Session)* 24. **Three Quarter Skies** - *Holy Water* 25. **Molchat Doma** - *Son* 26. **David Crosby** - *I’d Swear there was Somebody Here*                     Read the full article