Chloë March: Wintering: Moon
Powderkeg Records

Chloë March: Wintering: Light
Powderkeg Records

In this part of the world, winter's over and for many thankfully so. Yet the second and third chapters in Chloë March's trilogy of Wintering EPs makes one almost nostalgic for the snowy season and the idea of its return something to less dread than welcome. Wintering: Moon and Wintering: Light perpetuate the tone of the series' inaugural instalment with more of the UK producer's intoxicating voice and rich, electronics-enhanced songwriting. The dreamy, imagistic character of the EPs' songs dovetails seamlessly with her style of vocal and instrumental delivery.

As intimated by its chapter title, Moon places the listener within an enchanted nocturnal realm of evocative character and ghostly drift. March's voice is her music's primary signature, which can make one attend less to the instrumental backdrops she fashions for it. The EP's arresting opener, “Evergreen Monuments,” serves as a stirring reminder, however, of how effective they are. Its bumping bass-thudding groove and burbling synths prove just as transfixing as the half-time vocal, the song's style vintage dreampop and as transporting. An ominous undercurrent imbues the material with a darker edge that's in keeping with the Moon theme. Dreamily atmospheric and delicate, “Deals Undone” is classic March in its merging of alluring vocal inflections with a luscious piano-and-electronics accompaniment. The brief “Lock” augments her mantra-like vocal musings with sprinkles of acoustic piano, seagull cries, and a scratchy percussive track. Whereas it seems to be situated outside the city, “Air Street Dream” plants us solidly within a city dreamscape where “it's snowing in London” and the desperate longing for an absent other is setting in. “Moon Moon” caps the EP with shimmering chords and an echo-treated vocal wafting through its ethereal mists like phantoms longing for release.

Emerging from the oppressive darkness of winter, the final instalment, Light, embraces the spiritually replenishing promise of spring with “Sunbound.” Distant bells chime as if to announce its imminent arrival, the song's tone hopeful and optimistic and its arrangement peppered with tinkling and expressive vocal supplications. Perpetuating its radiant tone, the energized, piano-driven “Waking Words” celebrates the joys the fertile new season brings and the romantic desires that blossom with it. March's gift for sonic design is again evident in the synthetic soundscape she crafted for “London Planes,” the glittering song a natural candidate for a single. An ode to, in her words, “everyday pleasures,” the song's sunny chamber pop feels light years removed from the claustrophobia a snow-covered day can induce. Before we start celebrating too much, the EP's closer, “Same Sycamore,” reminds us of the isolating loneliness we escape from when spring finally arrives. Eschewing an elaborate production style, March opts here to pair her grief-stricken vocal with nothing more than piano. The five-song Moon and four-song Light sets weigh in at just over half-an-hour, which when coupled with the fourteen minutes of the five-song Wintering: Snow adds up to a full album of magical wintry songcraft. Yet I suspect that March will now move on from this three-part project to funnel her creative energies into a full-length with an entirely different thematic focus. Hopefully we'll find out sooner than later.

April 2026