By Sydney Wills
I felt the first chill this morning through my striped socks when my feet hit the hardwood floor, and the second when I stepped out into my front room. The room is graced with a bay window that I had diligently left open to allow for this very situation, whereby a cool breeze was creeping in. I assessed the situation from the windowsill—commuters in light jackets and cars with their windows down. By the time I recoiled my bare shoulder from the shockingly chilly bus window later in the day, there was no denying it: Fall is here!
For the rest of the day, I noticed every warm hue in the sycamore trees that line my block and would go so far as to say I could feel the ghost of Dylan Thomas looming over me. Though, the verdict isn’t set on whether that’s a result of his charming autumnal Welshness or the rapidly escalating prevalence of his “Poem In October” in the wake of my birthday and big move to a new city.
Either way, just as Thomas did in “Especially When The October Wind,” I knew I had to shut myself “in a tower of words” and get the wheels oiled on some sort of Fall something for Soundfynd. If you missed it, playlists are back, so what better time for both the first piece of my column as music curator and the first new playlist for this suspiciously playlist-lacking music discovery platform?
But, sheesh, a Fall playlist can be an intimidating order for even the least employed among us. My mind was swarmed with the vocal jazz of Nat King Cole and Billie Holiday, the intimidatingly numerous assortment of folk and country pop songs whose titles all bear the same Frankensteining of phrases like “lonely autumn witch sweater,” “my September’s here too soon,” or “New York Fall baby blues.”
With horror, I considered the angry Peanuts fans: would they wallop me with the force of a thousand scorned Charlie Browns if this playlist lacked the beloved vintage charm of Vince Guaraldi’s cool jazz soundtracks? What of the Gilmore Girls fanatics, who would certainly be expecting a certain level of Hope Sandoval and Norah Jones esque tuscan enchantment?
Burdened by the grim awareness that there was no way to appeal to the world’s varied Fall sensibilities, I resolved to create a seasonal playlist that felt like Soundfynd’s alone, to boldly plunge where no Spotify algorithmic recommendation system had gone before. I began with Lil Noid.
Jokes aside, I knew I wanted the playlist to evoke the lethargic warmth of slowcore’s dreamy instrumental palette, where fuzzy vocals provide just enough glow for chillingly spacious guitar rhythms. I wanted that wool sweater and electric heater feeling; it’s Yo La Tengo member Georgia Hubley’s stunningly threadbare voice, it’s the ghostly and warbling wail of a theremin against the clicking of tape-recorded DIY slacker rock where a palpably empty, crackling background becomes as essential to the mix as a bent trumpet to Dizzy Gillespie.
This playlist is the harmonic sliding tones of American folk greats who sound the most perfect when they’re backtracking your morning coffee. It’s the bittersweet sparseness of the second British folk revival that followed, where generation-transcending sorrows are intonated like a siren for the cold weather blues to come.
But as much as it is fuzzy socks by the fireplace, Fall to me is also heavy, ominously gothic. Fall occupies a spectral position in the seasonal cycle: summer persists in the traces of its warmth and color even as winter announces itself through their disappearance. So it’s a season populated with traces, haunted by afterimages—dead leaves, bare branches, shortening days.
It’s the nocturnal noise of the looming phantasm in the field. I embodied this in the playlist through the abrasiveness of No Wave NYC experimenters and the churning feedback of noise rock a la Sonic Youth’s Bad Moon Rising, where their gradual foray into the genre sees manic lashes of noise. These peaks and dips evoke the frenzied yet oddly thrilling freedom of sprinting through the cold dark, away from the cloaked and knife-wielding vigilante.
With that, you’ll also get the satanic impulses and horror-flipped funk samples of Memphis rap alongside grittier standouts from the Dirty South rap canon. Already, the Pen & Pixel maximalism and bootleg horror imagery of these genres’ 90s underground tape art make them almost indecipherable from the covers of any number of bloodsoaked slasher B movies. Everything is over-rendered in the best way—ornamental 3D type dripping with either blood or jewels, the dusty horns and downpitched raps; it’s all just terrifying, lavishly sinister—a zombie cocktail lounge with live music.
And then, just as your heart rate reaches its peak and the strings crescendo, the killer’s knife is poised in the air, the lightning flashes eerily through the window—there’s a break, a breath, of course, some jazz. Thank God. What would an autumnal playlist be without some brassy standards ripped from a grimy 70s neo-noir, without the bebop harping of Dorothy Ashby? And for each fiery composition, there’s something cool. Try out the sax-soaked Brazilian chamber jazz instrumentals of Fabiano do Nascimento & Sam Gendel, or venture ever frostier to boom bap-era jazz rap from Tribe and Slick Rick.
Clearly, there’s a lot going on, but hopefully it’s in more of a mosaic-of-leaves way and not a needle-in-a-haystack way. Here’s some elaboration-worthy standouts that might make this whole affair more digestible. Enjoy!
The American Analog Set: Diana Slowburner II
As soon as I heard the steadily building electric humming melt into the humble back beat of this mellow track from Numero Group darlings The American Analog Set, I knew it would make a great playlist opener. The intro glides hypnotically upward with enough energy to make you feel excited for what’s to come, but is still mellow enough to get lost in. This tendency of the group to create compositions that build nowhere is a major part of their cozy charm, as is their habit of burying their vocals delicately in the mix and letting them fade in and out (a strategy which came to fruition on this album and lasted for much of their discography).
Listen if you: sleep with socks on, waited in line at one of the Numero Group pop ups, prefer the beauty in your daily commute over the beauty you discover at the top of a mountain.
Mulatu Astatke: Ené Alantchie Alnorem
Ethio-jazz feels essential this time of year, and why not go ahead with the mind behind the introduction of the vibraphone and congra drums to the genre? This record compiles ten years of interesting material from the Ethiopian jazz master Mulatu Astatke, and much of it is from before his 70s material and therefore the throwing of funk into the mix. This track features a background of whirling winds, wood and otherwise, that feels captivating and autumnal when incorporated with the vibraphone. There’s a slightly spooked, mysterious quality to this song that’s reminiscent of the atmosphere on Miles Davis’s fusion records.
Listen if you: can move like this guy in this video, are a sucker for a vibraphone.
Standing On The Corner: Sonia (feat. Sonia Sanchez & Solange)
This cut off of the Brooklyn collective’s latest features crystalline vocals from Solange and a chopped up spoken word performance by American poet and Black Arts figure Sonia Sanchez. As Sanchez’s voice recites “poem at thirty,” her piece’s flawlessly composed enjambments are punctuated by the stabbing drums of the song. She casts away some of the fairytale associations of a dark night that some of the other tracks here lean into, and her vulnerable performance falls into place alongside the group’s wonderfully scatterbrained, hypnagogic production.
Listen if you: never let go of sLums collective, read Robert Creeley for the line breaks, thrash against fantasy.
Post Office Winter: Your Local Slaughterhouse
POW! Seriously, where the fuck did these guys go? When that delicate little intro riff turns into the jangly, reverbed guitar that thrusts us into some of the most beautifully gentle bedroom folk vocal tones I’ve heard this decade, I am literally transported back to the Fall of 2023. I remember walking around my college campus for an 8am class, blistering in the cold, resonating with their charmingly abstracted lyrics: “I am your lighthouse / Sitting in some soup / I want to live inside your eyes.” Post Office Winter was adjacent to that Mouseatoullie, Dwaal Troupe scene of Tape Club kids making the most wonderful slacker, noisy style music. It all had their own K Records, twee, bedroom sensibilities twinkled in. Groups like that feel like such a precursor for the oft-reported on “laptop twee” of today’s DIY rockers.
Listen if you: r phone autocorrects “your” to “yr”, think all slacker music would benefit from a chord organ, have ever made a zine.
Acetone: Return From The Ice
Acetone was an LA band formed from three members of Spinout, and they bring a special quality to the notoriously homogenous genre of slacker rock. When this archived collection of demos from 1992-2001 dropped in 2017, it was Christmas in September. It displays their more lovelorn side, with decidedly surfy guitar work that somehow doesn’t turn gauchely exotica against their lovely alt-country twang. There’s something gently tragic in this compilation, which feels much more like an original work of art, that makes it have that perfect Fall lethargy.
Listen if you: wish Duster was from Illinois, dabble in Cyanotype, listen to early Pavement from your surfboard.
Rosalie Sorells: I Think of You
When taking my pick from the stellar plethora of American folk music that could have populated this playlist, my criteria involved Woodstock vets, famous drinkers, and those who were not well enough renowned in their lifetime. I knew I had to include something from this beautiful Boise darling. I’ll always have an affinity for the uniquely cozy twang that female voices bring to this genre, and this one certainly possesses the “heartfelt tone” of greats such as the Brazilian soprano Bidu Sayão, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, and Patsy Cline. Hunter S. Thompson once wrote of her music, “Some of Rosalie’s songs are so close to the bone that I get nervous listening to them,” and that about sums it up.
Listen if you: would choose a bourbon over a spritz, yearn for the Foothills.
Lil Sko: Killa
Lil Sko is perhaps a lesser known rapper, yet his track here embodies that great older Memphis style of production and rapping. This track is included here partly due to its spooky keys, which titter with a mischief fit to backtrack an impishly grinning, black and white clad cartoon criminal as he wiggles his fingers excitedly over his loot, which is in a large sack labeled with a $. The mixing is absolutely awful, the melodies are catchy as hell, what more could you want from Memphis rap?
Listen if you: are known to tiptoe around cunningly, like beveled lettering, have a disdain for r/audiophiles.
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