Fall is a weird time of year for me. I love the long, hot days of summer, so as the year winds down, I’m reminded time and time again how challenging the coming months of darkness and cold will be. However, it’s hard to deny that fall offers some of the most impeccable vibes of the year. It’s a season of change, the temperatures begin to drop, the sun sets earlier, and the world begins the beautiful process of entering “hibernation”.
Now along with all the pumpkin patches, corn mazes, and hikes to admire the changing leaves, there’s gotta be a soundtrack to match, right?
That’s right! It’s time once more for me to force my agenda of niche (as a member of Gen-Z) 90’s music on you all. Here’s what I’ve been listening to most this fall.
10,000 Maniacs: Our Time In Eden
This album reminds me of a sunset. Our Time In Eden was 10,000 Maniacs final album with Natalie Merchant as lead singer and sole songwriter before she went solo. This album also proved to be the band’s biggest commercial hit, landing them gigs on MTV Unplugged and Bill Clinton’s Inaugural Ball, so Merchant’s departure truly felt like the end of an era. With songs written as a way to reminisce about the past, the end of the year seems like the perfect time to break out this album and bask in the last warm sunny days to be outside. Many of the songs are sung in a way that evokes nostalgia for the parts of the year already past. For example, the lyrics of tracks like “These Are Days” and “Stockton Gala Days” recall special times and memorable moments in a person’s life with lyrics like “These are days you’ll remember. Never before and never since, I promise, will the whole world be warm as this.”
These songs also provide a reminder to cherish each warm, beautiful day because soon it’ll be freezing cold and cloudy, as the sun begins to set on the year. These songs each almost sound sad, in a way, almost like a retrospective on the beauty of life itself, and because of this, its become one of my favorite albums to date.
Tori Amos: Boys for Pele
I’ve talked a good bit about my love and admiration for Tori Amos in the past, however just in the past month or so, I’ve really grown to appreciate one of her more controversial albums; Boys for Pele. This album is beloved by die-hard Tori fans for the same reasons that it is largely dismissed by the public; because it’s REALLY weird and pretty creepy. Do the lyrics make a whole lot of sense? Nope, but the emotion conveyed is still there and super strong.The musical composition and production of the album is top notch as well. I’ve listened through the album before, but never really caught on to any of the songs in the latter half of the album, sheerly because of length (the album is 18 tracks). Recently, however, I really got hooked on the song “In the Springtime of His Voodoo” which is one of the final songs on the album. I’ve listened to it probably 50 times and I still have no idea what it’s about, but it progresses so beautifully and has such strong choruses, I just can’t help replay it over and over again. My personal favorite Tori song, “Father Lucifer” is also from Boys for Pele. The song was written after Tori had a psychedelic experience where she met, and spoke to, the devil and it’s truly one of the most hauntingly beautiful songs I’ve ever heard because of its musical simplicity and powerhouse vocal performance, featuring lyrics such as: “Father Lucifer you never looked so sane. You always did prefer the drizzle to the rain. Tell me that you’re still in love with that milkmaid. How the Lizzies, how’s your Jesus Christ been hanging?”
The overall sound of the album is pretty dark, especially since it was recorded in a church in Ireland. However, there’s plenty of prominent piano playing and harpsichord-driven pop songs to round out the album’s almost “churchy” sound.
Dave Matthews Band: Before These Crowded Streets
I grew up listening to the Dave Matthews Band. Both my parents are big fans and now I am too, so there’s definitely an aspect of nostalgia with this one. However, out of all of Dave’s albums, Before These Crowded Streets is probably the darkest. Not just lyrically, but just the whole sound of the band kinda creates a spooky vibe that basically ends in a beautiful goodbye. There’s a few songs from this album that stand out as genuinely creepy such as “The Stone”, Halloween”, and “The Dreaming Tree”. These all have dark lyricism that discuss things from treacherous journeys to urban development and very much progress in their intensity throughout each song. (Spoiler alert: Halloween basically devolves into a bunch of screaming.)
However, my favorites off of BTCS are definitely “Don’t Drink the Water” and “Spoon”. “Don’t Drink the Water” is my favorite Dave song of all time, mostly because it’s simply amazing live, but also because it’s a song talking about the genocide of Native Americans, but written from the point of view of the white man claiming the land as their own. Lyrics such as “What’s this you say, you feel a right to remain? Then stay and I will bury you” and “I can breathe my own air, I can sleep more soundly upon these poor souls. I’ll build heaven and call it home, cause you’re all dead now” best exemplify this theme and make the song that much more powerful.
“Spoon” is more of a chill song, but it still sounds heavy with a lot of movement, so it’s perfect for the end of the album. It’s a slow moving song with lyrics all about coping with pain and loss. Another thing that I love about this album, and something that contributes to the fall vibes is that at the end of each song, there’s a little musical interlude into the next song, just creating a passage of time between songs. The last interlude, at the end of “Spoon”, ends with the lyrics “For now, goodbye, friend”, which I just think is a really haunting and captivating way to end an album, as well as a beautiful way of saying goodbye to summer.
Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing me rant about my 90’s music taste once again. As always, I really encourage you to give these albums a listen. The way music makes a person feel is something so personal and so cellular that it’s really hard to explain in quantifiable ways, but hopefully through all this, I’ve gotten a little bit closer to figuring out what makes a song sound like fall.
