Every year I sink my teeth into summer’s warm nest of sunshine, calm lakes and vitamin D that amplifies my freckles tenfold. The feeling of sitting around a campfire with my friends past midnight without needing more than a t-shirt is one that makes me clench my jaw, holding on as tightly as I can to August, autumn casting a grimacing shadow over the past four months of serotonin. However, while I may miss floating around on a paddleboard in the lake after work, each progression into a new season brings with it a type of comforting nostalgia – often familiar, sometimes foreign, but there’s always an album to go with it.
1. Don’t Let the Kids Win, Julia Jacklin
I could listen to Julia Jacklin any time of the year, but this album, in particular, floods me with a fuzziness that I connect directly with fall. Some songs are more upbeat, like “Coming of Age,” and some make me feel homesick, like “Hay Plain,” though, I mean this in the most endearing way possible. This is an album I want to tuck into the pocket of my hoodie and cradle on my way to class amidst the cool fog of a mid-October morning.
2. Shed, Title Fight
This album means a lot to me for a lot of different reasons; the best thing I could honestly say about this album is that you just need to listen to it. Seriously. My favourite songs, “Crescent Shaped Depression” and title track “Shed,” have a melancholic feel reminiscent of life-changing at a pace faster than you can keep up with. Teetering between making me want to scream and cry, in my mind, captures the feeling of fall perfectly. Plus, they’re from Kingston – Pennsylvania, but still – so you can listen to “You Can’t Say Kingston Doesn’t Love You” and sob about how much you miss your mom on the way to go get an afternoon coffee.
3. Heaven Surrounds You, Surf Curse
I was lucky enough to see Surf Curse live right after this album came out in the middle of September of my second year at Queen’s, and it very quickly became my favourite fall album of 2019. It’s probably safe to say a lot of this love came from the fact that I experienced Nick Rattigan screaming “River’s Edge” while crowd surfing on top of me and a bunch of other sweaty students, though I can also vouch for it being a great album in general. These songs have Surf Curse’s usual sentimental lyrics and fast-paced guitar that makes you want to dance while also sending you into a spiral about every decision you’ve ever made over the course of your life.
4. So Tonight That I Might See, Mazzy Star
The first time I heard Hope Sandoval’s voice I felt like my body had melted out of my skin and into a puddle at the bottom of my feet. This album is what I imagine the year 1993 would have felt like had I been born seven years earlier. Hope’s soft yet strong voice, her lyrics about love, and the alternative-folk twang present in the instrumentals make this a perfect fall album.
5. Punisher, Phoebe Bridgers
My favourite lyric from this album is: “I will wait for the next time you want me / Like a dog with a bird at your door.” That’s it, that’s the review.
My initial goal in writing this article was to talk about new albums I’ve discovered recently that I’ll be enjoying for the first time this fall, but I ended up going with my favourite classics that I listen to every year. (Just because the season’s changing, doesn’t mean my music taste has to.) These ones are just too good to let go of. Get listening! Seriously. You won’t regret it.