But We Can't Talk About It Now

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before, but I have seasonal tastes in music. The music I listen to in the spring [Funeral by The Arcade Fire] isn't the same as the summer [Red of Tooth and Nail by Murder by Death] or the winter [April by Vast, DECEMBERUNDERGROUND by AFI]. It's not that I don't listen to those albums other times in the year [I do], but they stick out more at those times of year. I'm much more likely to grasp for them, to play them over and over in loops.

I can't really say what it is about them that makes them seasonal--it has a lot to do with the general gestalt of the sound, the instruments and the beat, the lyrics. But also, I think, I associate each album with the season in which they first came to me, the season that wound around me as I fell, deeply, in love with each individual song.

It's November, of course, but our weather here has been described as "schizophrenic." Alternately rainy and balmy with bright and cool. Mild. Probably best described as mild.

The last few days have been positively brilliant for rolling down the windows of my car and listening to my autumn music. Here, this season, there are three albums:

1. Fleet Foxes by Fleet Foxes

I "discovered" Fleet Foxes last autumn, at the beginning of the school year. It became the easy backdrop for the last few months of 2008--winding around me in the car or as I made dinner. The sound was immediately drawing, a mix of the indie sound I love and the CSNY sound of the music my parents raised me on. I'm just waiting for the day I can go see these guys live.

My favorite songs on the album are, well, all of them. But I particularly like:

White Winter Hymnal

Tiger Mountain Peasant Song [as covered here by "First Aid Kit"]

He Doesn't Know Why

2. Kid A by Radiohead

Yes, I know, everyone and his mother started listening to Radiohead years ago. But last autumn, they fell into my hands for the first time.

Idioteque

3. Transatlanticism by Death Cab for Cutie

Not the first songs I'd ever heard by Death Cab, but definitely my favorite. Autumn 2005 for 10/11 of the songs. A beautiful album, and almost perfect.

Lightness

Tiny Vessels

Then, in 2006--late in the year, when I was spinning and off. I discovered that one of the dangers of chronically pirating music is sometimes losing pieces of albums, that one single song that could bring everything home.

We Looked Like Giants

***

I think, honestly, that my autumn music is the most beautiful music in my cd case. It represents a depth and reflects the stark change that autumn can be. Music so deep and beautiful it hurts sometimes.

I know that the videos are jumbled--a mix of true videos, live performances and fan mixes. But I chose them for specific reasons--because they show the range of experiences these songs can reflect. And show a little bit of what they can mean to each person--even the people who wrote them.

Sometimes, in someone redoubling a song you've heard one hundred times, you find something new in it. And that can be just as enlightening as the first time you sat--in the car or in the dark--smiling or sobbing because of the way the song made you feel.