The fall is a sort of amorphous thing, never building any continuity or personality, simply drifting into the winter. It's my favorite season in New England, and yet it only lasts for four weeks. How typical.
Fall elicits a certain sort of reflection from me, and after the more fun, free-spirited attitude of summer living, it's probably for the best. While reflection is typically scored with background noise like busy city traffic, the clinking of porcelain coffee mugs, or wind flowing through the trees, it also provides a unique opportunity to utilize music as a medium.
Being a person infatuated with specific time periods and the culture that surrounds them, I often crawl back to albums that are clear period pieces. This is the sort of record your parents spun for months on end, letting it tattoo their souls and become a part of them. When looking back at the end of the 1960s, The Beatles' Let it Be personifies exactly that for me. It's not necessarily what the modern world reflects to, but I can picture my parents sitting around listening to "The Long and Winding Road," thinking about all that had just occurred in those tumultuous years.
From a more modern attitude, Supergrass' new release, Road to Rouen, comes from a band that was formerly considered a party record producer, It seems to hit many of the same tones as Let it Be, if not with the same proficiency. Looking at their rise to fame as a musical act, including moderately successful American singles "Alright" and "Pumping on your Stereo," Supergrass seem to be more concerned with what is left of itself after 10 years in the scene, a not uncommon consideration for individuals, nor for a band that seems under the spell of stereotype and familiarity.
In a tone very much in common with Road to Rouen, Spiritualized's Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating Through Space is very much a record of complexities. Sounding somewhere in between The Verve's Urban Hymns and Blur's 13, it sounds large, like a concert hall or studio with cathedral ceilings. There is a lot of space on the record, but it always seems to be filled by a cacophony of pipe organs, backup singers, and horns - a bit like writing about the city from a country point of view.
An album doused in hope and optimism is often hard to come by without losing depth in musical character, though Sigur Ros's Takk is up to task. With the same sort of grandiose design as previous releases, Takk takes the typical morose sounds of the Icelandic group's work and provides a humble, small voice of hope in its place. With lyrics in the group's native Icelandic, it is not about understanding what they have to say in a literal sense, but feeling it flow through you like the breeze on an empty beach. The swells of hope present in this record are on par with what one might have felt at a coronation ceremony in the 1500s.
With a more realistic take on hope comes this year's best charity album, Help: A Day in the Life. It features appearances by a litany of British acts, and sadly not many American ones, that donated their time and talents for this release, including Babyshambles, Gorrilaz, Coldplay, Razorlight, and Radiohead. Help has already become a top hit in England and is doing quite well through Internet sales. The songs themselves do not coalesce well, but individually most hold up. Standouts include Gorrilaz's "Hong Kong," a more vocal driven track for the group, and Babyshambles' "From Bollywood to Battersea." It may provide a physical interpretation of the hope within Takk, with money from the sales of the record going to help children who are the victims of war worldwide.
It is often through listening to albums and investing oneself in the spirit of fall that a greater understanding of what these times mean to you can come forth. The hope present in Takk and Help are enough to alter your mind, maybe even enough to take your reflection in a more positive direction than the subsequent seasons may lead.
Albums mentioned:
The Beatles Let it Be 5.0/5.0
Supergrass Road to Rouen 4.0/5.0
Spiritualized Ladies and Gentlemen 3.8/5.0
Sigur Ros Takk 4.5/5.0
Various Artists Help: A Day in the Life 3.9/5.0
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