People often search for music to fit how they're feeling, or what's going on in their lives. However, discovering new music in the age of the Internet is frequently a daunting task. With hundreds of hours of new music being released every week and hundreds of years of music from the past, trying to wade through the seemingly endless possibilities can be awfully taxing.
In an effort to mitigate this anxiety, I have laid out six albums that perfectly capture the autumn season.
1.) Nick Drake - Pink Moon
The genre that comes up when discussing quintessentially autumn music most frequently is folk music. Drake was a British singer/songwriter who only released three albums in his short life before his tragic suicide in 1974. Pink Moon was the final album Drake released before he died, and it's an incredibly short, soft record. Standing at 28 minutes and featuring nothing but Drake's voice and guitar (and piano on one track), the album's lyrics are incredibly woeful and despondent. Drake sings a lot about his depression and his degrading mental state on this record, though due to the short length, the oppressive depression doesn't overstay its welcome. Sample.
2.) Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
In my opinion, this is one of the greatest indie rock albums to have ever been recorded, which is saying quite a bit given this band's illustrious career. As far as indie rock goes, Yo La Tengo see fit to sink the guitars into a sea of shoegaze-esque haze while vocalist Ira Kaplan sings songs of significant others' come and gone and the anxieties of being an aimless twenty-something. The album itself is on the long side, but it seems to be the opus of people who aren't entirely where they want to be in life, but are comfortable enough not to do anything about it. Sample.
3.) Autechre - Tri Repetae
The seminal electronic music duo from England's third album is a frigid, calculated masterpiece. This 72 minute monster of a record is a dense collection of dizzying polyrhythms and synths as cold as a stiff autumn breeze, creating a mechanical sense of loneliness. Autechre work well within the genre of IDM, or Intelligent Dance Music, which is a subgenre of electronic music that focuses on personal experimentation while still drawing heavily from house and techno music. For sure, one of the best albums in the genre and an equally great album for autumn. Sample.
4.) Brand New - The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me
Emo is a genre label that frequently gets haphazardly thrown around and gets misused. However, Brand New is a band who does this genre the correct and proper way. The album itself features a multitude of shimmering guitars, killer basslines, booming drums, and melodic shouted vocals. This is possibly the most maximal approach to emo music that has been attempted that is simultaneously tasteful and meaningful. The lyrics on the record talk about everything from love, relationships, loss, religion, death, and the emotional turmoil that all of these omnipresent themes of the human experience present. Sample.
5.) Blind Guardian - Nightfall in Middle-Earth
As far as metal goes, this is some of the catchiest I've heard. Blind Guardian is a German metal band who frequently get attached with the label of Power Metal, which fuses the campiness and melodies of Heavy Metal with the fast tempo and technical prowess of Speed Metal. With this stylistic blueprint in mind, the fantasy geeks in Blind Guardian decide to pen an album based on one of the things they know best: Tolkien. The fantasy elements of Tolkien's stories are put on full display in these cinematic and orchestral metal compositions that mentally puts you into the mindset of a Hobbit in the forests of Middle-Earth. This album is equal parts cheesy, technical, and epic. Sample.
6.) Animal Collective - Fall Be Kind EP
Hot of the back of their most successful album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, Animal Collective releases the best EP of 2009. Avey, Panda, and Geologist come together for a few leftover tracks from their previous album that seem to create a particular atmosphere that no other Animal Collective project has made before. The EP is rather short and is much colder than the band's other work, but it is still a wonderful pop record that should fit in on every listener's autumn playlist. Sample.
