Season of Glass: loss with a sharp edge

Season of Glass is a document of loss that does not want to be easy. Yoko Ono's album, dated 1981 and out now through Secretly Canadian on July 17, 2026, runs 17 tracks and just over an hour. The titles set the tone before a note plays: Goodbye Sadness, Mindweaver, Nobody Sees Me Like You Do, Mother of the Universe, Walking on Thin Ice. This is not an album that hides its weather. It wants to be read in order, like a hand held up.

That structure is the argument. Half the tracks are under four minutes, short and blunt on the page, and the few longer songs carry the weight. Even When You're Far Away runs 5:21. She Gets Down On Her Knees runs 4:15. Mother of the Universe runs 4:31. Then Walking on Thin Ice, the centerpiece, takes up seven full minutes and lands at track 15. The sequence asks you to cross a lot of small, sharp pieces before the ice. That is a deliberate choice, and it works on the page. The record's own sense of pacing is its best evidence.

The record's ending is the miss. After Walking on Thin Ice, Season of Glass appends a 2:12 demo of I Don't Know Why and a 3:42 alternate version of Dogtown. Those final tracks are archive. They add context, not force. The album would be harder, cleaner, and more titled if it stopped at track 15. As it stands, the closing minutes soften the gesture and blur the focus the tracklist worked to build.

Still, the record's central claim holds. The scope is big and human: goodbyes, mothers, universes, thin ice, no, no, no. The language is plain. The shape is careful. A demo and an alternate version cannot cancel the nerve of the tracklist. This is a difficult album on purpose, and it stays difficult. That is the point.

Season of Glass is not polished. It is kept, glass and all. It asks you to show up. You should.

The tracklist

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