Music for When Everything Feels Louder at Night

I’ve always found that night time has a way of making everything feel a little louder. Thoughts feel closer, emotions sit heavier, and even small things seem to echo more than they would in the daylight. It’s not always a bad thing: but it does mean I reach for a different kind of music. Something quieter, a little more spacious, that doesn’t overwhelm but understands the mood I’m already in.

Below I've selected some albums that to me feel intimate, hazy and almost vulnerable; the type of music that provides a strange comfort, and keeps the big feelings at bay.

For when your thoughts won’t leave you alone

Songs - Adrianne Lenker

Adrianne Lenker’s songs is one of my personal favourite albums to listen to all the way through. Something about this album feels comfortingly personal, leaving no emotions left untouched. Her voice feels close enough to touch, with the intention of preserving acoustic soundbites, birdsong, rain noises. This acclaimed album was written in a one-room mountain cabin in Western Massachusetts, following the COVID-19 pandemic. This is an album for reflecting without ruminating, to accompany the late evening/early morning hours.

For when memories keep flooding back to you

Lost Weekend - Phoebe Bridgers

There's something about listening to Phoebe Bridgers late at night that makes even the smallest moments of hope feel enormous. What I love about Lost Weekend is its quiet optimism, particularly in “Kill Me”, which feels like a reminder that things can be difficult without being hopeless. Then there's “The Governor's Waltz”, with the line “being myself wasn't easy, do it for me” — a sentiment that feels almost impossibly tender. Sometimes, when everything feels louder at night, what you need isn't an album that tells you everything will be fine, but one that reminds you that simply being yourself is worth the effort.

For when your feelings feel too big for you

Guard Dog - Searows

Searows' Guard Dog is my most-played album of all time, having accompanied me through secondary school, college and now university. It's become something of a constant in a life that's otherwise changed quite a lot, and for the past four years, it's been the soundtrack I fall asleep to every night. There's a fragility and tenderness to this album that I find incredibly soothing; it makes the big feelings feel a little less frightening, as though they're something to sit with rather than something to fix. I've never really understood the assumption that listening to sad music must make you feel worse. Sometimes, I think, it does quite the opposite. There's comfort in hearing your feelings reflected back at you, in finding something that understands the things you struggle to put into words. For me, Guard Dog has always felt like that: a quiet, familiar presence that softens the edges of the world when everything feels a little too much.

For when the night feels endless

So Tonight That I Might See - Mazzy Star

October feels like the Mazzy Star season. There's something about the way the days grow shorter and the evenings settle in that makes So Tonight That I Might See feel especially at home. “Fade Into You” is the kind of song I'd want playing somewhere in the background of my life, as though an ordinary moment could suddenly become a scene in a film. It carries such a heaviness of feeling, but there's also something weightless about it; you can drift inside its atmosphere and linger there for as long as you like. I could play it on a loop and never tire of it. There's a timelessness to the song that makes it feel as though it has always existed, waiting to find you at exactly the right moment. Somehow, all roads lead back to “Fade Into You”. No matter how much time passes or how many times I listen, it never seems to lose its hold on me. Perhaps that's what makes it such a perfect song for this time of year: it doesn't ask you to move on from a feeling, only to stay with it a little longer.

What I think the most poignant thing about listening to music late at night is that it doesn’t necessarily silence the noise in your head; sometimes it just gives that noise somewhere to go.

Honourable mentions

For the nights when you need a little more, these songs deserve a place on the playlist, too:

• Simple things- runo plum

• It’ll All Work Out- Phoebe Bridgers

• I Can and I Will - Searows

• I Stopped Trying (feat. Delaney Bailey)- Sydney Rose, Delaney Bailey

• Appaloosa Bones- Gregory Alan Isakov

• Bedroom Floor- Sydney Rose

• the way that i am- Abby Powledge

• The Book of Love- Olivia Rodrigo, War Child Records

• All My Mess- Nieve Ella

• Soren- beabadoobee

• Beach Baby- Bon Iver

Written by, Sophie Robinson