Matt's Halloween Mixtape; Part Three

Link to INTRODUCTION
Link to PART ONE
Link to PART TWO
Link to PART FOUR
Link to PART FIVE
Link to THE FINAL CHAPTER

AFI - Fall Children

AFI's 1999 All Hallow's EP is the sound of a band squarely hitting its stride.  All Hallow's finds Davey Havock and company at the earliest stages of their transition from hardcore punk to moody mid tempo neo-goth.  For the albums trim 13 minutes, AFI is entirely in their element blasting dark shout-along anthems of Misfits inspired, horror themed punk.  The disc's opener Fall Children begins with a fluid, creeping guitar run.  Davey drones the opening verse as sinister feedback swells in the background, before finally a shout cracks the song open like a lightning bolt.  From there it is a galloping, almost apocalyptic burst of maliciousness.  Davey seems to be screaming his lungs out from atop a black soapbox, while the backup shouting responds to him like a wolf to a full moon.  Fall Children is a flat out rallying cry for the misfits and weirdos of America to stand and embrace THEIR holliday.  

Man…or Astro-Man? - Put Your Finger in the Socket (Maximum Voltage Version)

The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore... television is reality, and reality is less than television.

This clip from the horror classic Videodrome opens Put Your Finger in the Socket, which from there takes off with classic surf-rock abandon.  Self-described as "space-age surf", Man or Astroman takes their queues from classic surf music with wobbly, reverb laden guitars, but adds a liberal amount of tongue-in-cheek B-horror humor.  The result of course is a unique, energetic sound that is necessary on any Halloween mixture.  

Bauhaus - Bela Lugosi's Dead

Even without frequent name checking of a certain horror film icon, Bela Lugosi's Dead is over nine minutes of pure atmosphere, and essentially a horror movie soundtrack in and of itself.  With all kinds of ticks, clicks, dripping and screeching (all over a crawling, understated bassline), Bauhaus puts you right into the gothic mountaintop castles of the classic Universal monster movies.  The eeriness is palpable by the time the sing-speak vocals come in, deep and dripping with reverb, introducing the undead Mr. Lugosi, aka Count Dracula. 

With exactly two weeks to go, there are a handful of Halloween music legends just dying to be introduced...

Running List

Sonic Youth - Death Valley '69

HorrorPops - Walk Like a Zombie

Suicide - Frankie Teardrop

Acid Bath - Fingerpaintings of the Insane

The Beatles - Revolution 9

The Butthole Surfers - [TBD]

AFI - Fall Children

Man...or Astroman? - Put Your Finger in the Socket (Maximum Voltage Version)

Bauhaus - Bela Lugosi's Dead

Halloween Album Special: Butthole Surfers - Locust Abortion Technician

If Hell has a house band, I like to think that it is the Butthole Surfers.  The Surfers built a career out of making music that at its friendliest is just plain weird, but more often than not is threatening, abrasive, and legitimately frightening.  On their 1996 album Locust Abortion Technician in particular, they have an undeniable knack of putting on tape the mentally unhinged type of sounds that exist in the darkest corners of our psyche, only brought fourth in the unstable mind or to soundtrack tormented fever dreams.  I will go through with the agonizing task of picking one song from Locust Abortion to represent The Surfers on the final Halloween mixtape, but for now it feels necessary to address the entirety of an album that for my money is the most deranged, maniacally twisted collection of songs ever set to tape.

"Daddy?…What does 'regret' mean?"  

"Well son, the funny thing about regret is- it's better to regret something that you have done than to regret something you haven't done.  

And by the way, if you see your mom this weekend, be sure and tell her:

SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN!"

And with that, the Butthole Surfers launch headfirst into 33 minutes of utter nightmare.  The opening track that contains this delightfully haunting intro is Sweet Loaf, a cover/parody of sorts of Black Sabbath's Sweet Leaf.  The hook is a warped version of Tony Iommi's classic original riff, accompanied by effects-laden inhuman shouts and screams.  The vocal effects in question have come to be called "Gibbytronix" after frontman Gibby Haynes, who processes his vocals in various demented ways throughout the album.  It does an admirable job of introducing the general approach of the Surfers:  weird and even disturbing, but at the end of the day still flat-out rocks and is delivered with a sly wink. 

The next few tracks dwell in the deepness of this atmosphere.  Graveyard is rooted in a distorted, downtuned guitar riff that seems to grind its way through it's own sludge, with brief piercing leads occasionally slicing through the mix.  The Gibbytronix makes its presence felt, as the vocals are heavily down-pitched to provide a suffocated, guttural quality as if they are excruciatingly making their way up through six feet of earth.  Following Graveyard is Pittsburgh to Lebanon, a down-and-dirty blues straight from the depths of hell.  It plods along to a lunatic groove as Gibby howls distortedly about such things as buying "(his) first shotgun at the age of three".  

Just as you begin to get used to the downtempo weirdness thus far, The Surfers throw in a subconsciously dreaded monkey wrench, confirming your fears that this rabbit hole does indeed deepen.  The brief instrumental Weber sloppily establishes riffs and motives that are never expanded upon, and leads directly into the farm animal sounds.  The moo's and baa's that carry throughout Hay are soon accompanied by stuttered, disorienting tape loops that flap and reverse over themselves as the animals continue their yelling and are joined late in the track by faint high-pitched human chanting and devilish growls.  At the albums halfway point the relatively straightforward Human Cannonball is a welcome intermission.  More importantly however, it is a very strong stand-alone garage rock song.  Albeit on the terms of the Butthole Surfers; the riffs drone along, the vocals are manic and the lyrics are cryptic; it adds a new level of musical sensibility that will be necessary to carry this album through its home stretch.  

U.S.S.A. shoves us back into nightmareland with a terribly distorted drumroll, or march, or…something.  The brief fade-out provides a teasingly false sense of security right before the grinding guitar noise stutters its way to the front of the mix.  Gibby spends the next couple minutes half-screaming (through filters that give even more edges to his delivery) incoherently over the now familiar, yet no less threatening, chopped up tape loops.  Much to everyone's demented joy, as soon as this madness ends The O-Men pick it right back up.  The rhythm pounds in double-time now, and once the rapid-fire vocals come in spewing nonsense it's obvious there is no turning back.  In what I suppose could be called a chorus, there is a call-and-response from the many schizophrenic voices of Gibby Haynes, as his high pitched worm-voice gives que to his Darth Vader-on-acid voice, which is followed by an unhinged, hyperactive guitar lead before it starts all over again.  The tempo is taken down briefly with Kuntz, but the insanity very much remains.  The song is a remixed version of what seems like an old-time traditional Indian or Middle-Eastern song edited just right (and with extra voices added) so it sounds like the word cunts is repeated as the etherial rhythm drones on.  After that we are treated to another version of Graveyard, this time without any downpitching effects.  Somehow it is even more maddening this way, as the guitar plucks and screams while the Gibbytronix take the vocals to new depths of delirium.  

The darkness all comes to a head with troubling album closer 22 Going on 23.  In audio taken from an actual radio broadcast, a young woman details with disturbing tranquility her "sleep problems" stemming from a sexual assault.  In the background a feral, lumbering riff rises and swells with pure evil as the radio host analyses her issues with echoing terms like "anxiety…sleep programming…conselling…medicine…depression…etc".  After a slowed down, otherworldly guitar solo the same woman resurfaces, complaining of an entirely different set of problems.  The album then fades out into familiar farm-animal noises, and comes to a disturbing halt with crickets and slow-motion "moo"ing.  Upon further inspection, not only are these slowed down versions of the same sample heard in Hay, but the woman's voice had previously been sped up and distorted and used throughout the album, subconsciously tying all of the madness together.  

As you're dropped into silence and left wondering exactly what the hell it is that you've just listened to, the album continues to work its magic as the aural journey through hell sticks vaguely in your mind like the aforementioned fever dreams.  After a little time to readjust to normalcy the appreciation grows for the way Locust Abortion Technician maintains an enjoyable, momentous listen even as it sinks to new depths of psychosis.  The overall haunting atmosphere and gleeful embrace of everything creepy and darkly experimental make this as good of an album as any to give a spin during Halloween. 

Matt's Halloween Mixtape; Part Two

Behind all of the fun and games associated with Halloween lies a very dark and mysterious past.  While customs such as carving jack-o-lanterns, trick-or-treating, dressing up in costumes and so on have become time-honored traditions ubiquitous with the season, and many variations of monsters and ghosts have rightfully become pop-culture icons, we mustn't forget the darkly rich history of the relatively recently mainstream holiday.  The underlying purpose of Halloween is less about celebration as it is paying respect to the certainty of death, and the frighteningly unknowable thereafter.  

This eerie correlation with the the unknown and the otherworldly is, in my opinion, what really makes Halloween special.  Therefore, I've taken great care to include in this series those songs which I feel most effectively acknowledge the darker aspects of the human (or not-so-human) condition, and bring them to the forefront of a fittingly ominous atmosphere.  

Suicide - Frankie Teardrop

Suicide is quite simply a weird "band", both during their active years and within a historical context.  The were the first group to ever use the term "punk music" to advertise a show, yet they were widely detested by much of the punk scene for their provocative demeanor and reliance on keyboards, drum machines, and murmured vocals.  

This artist/audience conflict came together for several stunning moments on their 1977 self-titled debut album however, most notably on side two's minimalist epic Frankie Teardrop.  The song immediately establishes a disturbing claustrophobic atmosphere of doom with a pounding, straight eighth-note rhythm of industrial noise that drones on for its ten minute entirety.  laid over the top of this agonizingly simple beat with unnerving volume are Alan Vega's nervy, tense, half-whispered vocals.  As the metallic noise pounds on Vega weaves a tale of a young father on the brink of insanity trapped in poverty and the maddening repetition of his factory work.  Good ol' Frankie hopelessly grinds through the days to support his family, but when his desperation reaches its breaking point he is left to pick up a gun and let it provide all the "support" his family needs.  All the while the constant pounding noise continues.  The song can explode into hell at any moment, but the real terror is that you know it won't- it will just keep droning on and on.  When listened to in the right setting, you have already long been firmly on edge by the time the utterly blood curdling screams come out of nowhere. 

Acid Bath - Finger Paintings of the Insane

Much earlier in this blog's life I wrote with disturbed affection about Acid Bath's classic "death rock" album When the Kite String Pops.  I am excited now to have an opportunity to more deeply explore one of my favorite cuts from that album.  

In the years before and since I made that post reviewing When the Kite String Pops I haven't come up with a better description for their sound than that which must constantly play within the mind of a serial killer.  From their overbearing menace to the unrelenting brutality of their lyrics and their schizophrenic straddling of genres, Acid Bath creates a musical environment that is directly engaging in it's heaviness yet consistently unnerving in its twists and turns, and it has a way of getting you lost in the fractured mind of the deeply disturbed.

At no point in the album are these qualities on more troubling display than during Finger Paintings of the Insane.  As vocalist Dax Riggs alternates between morbidly dark crooning and agonized verbal assaults of self-destruction, torture and pure evil, the band weaves a spellbinding web of shifting dynamics and jarring tempo changes, bookended by skull-crushing rhythms and guitars that grind and slash their way through the nightmare.  As a listener you are left disoriented; scared and lost in the mind of a psychopath, yet morbidly fascinated and unable to take yourself away from the hellish, unforgiving sonic landscape.

The Beatles - Revolution 9  

Possibly the one song that I would call the creepiest comes from an unlikely yet ultimately unsurprising source.  More widely regarded for their mop-tops and desire to "hold your hand", The Beatles were certainly no slouches when it came to experimental recording, and the results heard in Revolution 9 are nothing short of terrifying.  

Revolution 9 begins with a minor piano theme and a mysterious voice repeating "number nine", panned jarringly between stereo channels.  For the ensuing eight minutes, it spirals deeper and deeper into pure insanity.  The piece consists entirely of various different tape loops that have been treated with odd, disquieting effects.  Most of them are taken from classical music or opera, but there are also everyday sound effects such as crowd noise, laughter, voices, breaking glass, and car horns that in this context are made harsh and grating.  The loops fade in and out, dance around each other, and, at the absolute scariest- burst unexpectedly out of nowhere on only one side of the mix (DO NOT listen to this loudly on headphones late at night).  In a move of subtle production genius, the piano and "number nine" motif recur and echo almost tauntingly in and out of the mix, confirming that the suddenly not-so-Fab Four realize exactly how uncomfortable of a listening experience they have created.  

Running List:

Sonic Youth - Death Valley '69

HorrorPops - Walk Like a Zombie

Suicide - Frankie Teardrop

Acid Bath - Finger Paintings of the Insane

The Beatles - Revolution 9

Matt's Halloween Mixtape; Part One

Sonic Youth - Death Valley '69

With a few weeks left to go, it feels appropriate to kick things off with a song that leaves its intentions shrouded in mystery.  Sonic Youth uses this vagueness to its advantage by crafting an atmosphere of impending doom and an aggressive creepiness on its own terms.  Death Valley '69 was inspired by the ultra-creepy Manson Family; and the pulsating rhythm, screeching discordant guitars, and schizophrenic vocals stay true to the source material in the most satisfying way.  

The Horrorpops - Walk Like a Zombie

To introduce the other side of "Halloween music" are a Danish group of jubilant misfits (foreshadowing definitely intended) known as The HorrorPops.  Taking the "psychobilly" subgenre to the brink of caricature, The HorrorPops energetically combine 1950s rockabilly and doo-wop songcraft with direct lyrical references to the undead, the otherworldly, the luridly sexual, and the violent.  The result of course, is an ominous yet upbeat representation of whatever debauchery comes to life for Halloween.  

With that we reach the point of no return, the Halloween season is upon us.  It is said that this is the time of year in which the barrier between the living and the dead is at its weakest, and later in the week we will take a close look at some songs that unearth the darker depths of our human psyche…

Introducing: Matt's Halloween Mixtape

Among all of the things that I love about music, possibly the most significant is its ability, perhaps more than any other art medium, to play on one's imagination.  The perfect song choice for any particular moment can emphasize, influence, or sympathize with the listener's mindset in a way that is nothing short of magical.  For a certain type (or types) of music, this quality is brought out in spades once the leaves start drop, scary and/or risque disguises are put together, and an aura of mischief and the macabre creeps into the atmosphere.  Whether the music directly acknowledges Halloween and traditional horror tropes or takes a more vague approach, many artists have found their own ways of celebrating the strange sub-season of October.  

Out of fascination for this, I've decided to start a series of posts highlighting my absolute favorite of these songs; culminating towards the end of the month with The Noisepaper's FIRST EVER compilation release.  The selections will range from the lighthearted celebratory, to the deranged and legitimately fear-inducing, to the just plain weird.  The one thing they will all have in common though is an undeniable contribution to the mysterious, sometimes threatening, but always enjoyable and impossible to ignore Spirt of Halloween.  

Starting tonight, I will be adding songs one by one several times per week until the full compilation is released just in time for All Hallow's Eve.  Stay tuned, if you dare!

America's Best Terrible Band: The Replacements - The Shit Hits The Fans

I have alluded in the past to the idea of walking in on the world's greatest rock band while they are just jamming somewhere without giving a shit.  Well, The Replacements are undoubtedly the most fitting group for that description.  While being a talented and incredibly influential group of musicians, they are often remembered as a band who could be mindblowingly great one night, but an absolute trainwreck the next.  Their infamous concert bootleg The Shit Hits the Fans is the greatest known recorded demonstration of the latter.  The fan-recorded collection, of which only 10,000 original copies exists, puts The 'Mats on display in all of their brilliantly sloppy, embarrassing, unhinged, warts-and-all glory.

The Shit Hits the Fans was recorded late in 1984 at The Bowery in Oklahoma City, by the club's then manager Roscoe Shoemaker.  'Mat's frontman Paul Westerberg's response to Shoemaker's request to record the show, "Why?  We SUCK" apparently qualified as enough of an approval, and the show was recorded by two microphones to a cassette tape.  In between the live performance for around 30 fans and the recording we know now, the tape was supposedly confiscated from a fan by a roadie, confiscated by that roadie by Shoemaker, and partially corrupted due to Westerberg accidentally pressing the record button.  Worry not however, for better or worse the recording remained mostly intact…and this is only the beginning.  

The show starts out as a relatively normal set, albeit sloppy and unorganized as per the 'Mats nature.  It starts out reasonably enough with the raucous cover of Lawdy Miss Clawdy before hinting at the coming chaos with an absent-minded string of cover songs (including lil' Michael's I'll Be There) and the odd original choice of Lovelines.  They hit their stride though with the rapid-fire foursome of original songs Sixteen Blue, Can't Hardly Wait, I Will Dare, and Hear You Been to College.  As the band just barely holds it together through this handful of original songs, they noticeably become increasingly incoherant, and this is where things get interesting.  

 From that point on, the 'Mats played exactly zero original songs, as they had been reduced to painfully struggling through a never-ending series of classic rock covers.  For anyone who, through hindsight, is in on the "joke", it is absolutely hilarious.  Westerberg improvises entirely new, mumbled and/or screamed lyrics to Iron Man and Misty Mountain Hop.  Songs are inexplicably aborted mid-verse.  On more than one occasion part of the band is playing an entirely different song than the rest and they eventually are forced to bring it together, with cringe-inducingly entertaining results.  My personal favorite moment is when Paul gleefully introduces the next trainwreck as "Jumpin' Jack FLASK!?", and proceeds to launch into what could loosely be called a Rolling Stones "cover", which is quickly aborted, but I have to think is something that Keith Richards would have no choice but to be proud of.  The whole thing is a hilariously terrible display, but in a twisted way is a great encapsulation of rock music, considering the vast majority of bands that drunkenly bang through shitty covers in their garage without a care in the world.  The recording has no ending.  It fades into audience chatter (during which Westerberg seems to repeatedly mishear an audience request for a "Beatles" cover as "Freedom?") and a choppy twosome of quickly aborted Beatles and Zeppelin covers bring the whole aural massacre to an end.

If nothing else, this bootleg is a testament to the unique version of greatness via relatability that The Replacements have achieved.  A familiarity of the band at their best reveals a group of uncannily talented musicians and vocalists, with the ability to capture the heart and soul of a lost generation, from the aggressively discontent anthems to the ernest emotion of their stagnancy.  It becomes a fitting contrast therefore, to hear that very same band at the peak of their ineptitude, the crutch of alcohol that had been used during their desperate yet futile search for meaning reducing them to an inside joke at best.  At the end of it all, you are left with...well, this.  And you can take it or leave it.  

All told, The Shit Hits the Fans is enjoyable without guilt for the sake of listening to a band that couldn't possibly give less of a shit (pun unintended).  Put into context however, it is the sound of a great band crippled equally by societal restraint and self destruction.  Whatever the case, the explosion sure is beautiful.

DOWNLOAD HERE:  THE REPLACEMENTS- The Shit Hits The Fans (upgrade). rar

My Favorite Fall Albums [Part One]

Matt Dippong 2013

It's easy at the beginning of any season to claim it as your favorite.  There is nothing more refreshing and inspiring than the change of pace when crippling cold or stagnant heat gives way to the welcome change in conditions.  That said, fall is without a doubt the time of year that I enjoy the most.  The crisp breeze whisks away the summer haze and wraps the world in glowing oranges and browns.  The flannel shirts make their way out of the closet, more blankets find their way to the bed, coffee tastes better than you ever remember, football comes back to life with a vengeance,  and an aura of ominous mystique envelopes your being.  More than anything however, it provides the absolute perfect setting in which to listen to the most genuine, organic music ever created.  

Perhaps more so than any other season, I find it easy to articulate what it is that, to me, makes great "fall music".  The tempo is casual and the instrumentation is sparse, laden with windy harmonicas and strumming acoustic guitars.  The lyrics are introspective, nostalgic, celebratory, and rustic, often ingeniously at the same time.  It is music that makes you yearn to wander aimlessly in the woods, amongst the dead leaves as they litter the cold ground and flutter in the breeze.  It is music that puts you fireside in a log cabin, with nothing else around but the mountains and the deer.  It is music that represents the season of death after the summer revelry, and how we have learned to embrace it.  

Here then are my top ten (for now) absolute favorite albums for this pivotal time of year.

[NOTE:  This article deliberately excludes albums that are specifically fitting for Halloween, that list is for a different time…]

[PART TWO]

1. Neil Young and Crazy Horse

Simply put, it would have been easy for me to fill this list with Neil Young albums.  He is hands down my favorite musician to ever walk the earth, and the autumnal spirit of his music is a big reason why.  So out of fairness to everyone else who has ever made a record, I decided to let the king of fall music sit alone at the top.  

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere introduced the world to the beast that is Neil Young with Crazy Horse, as Neil straps on Old Black and embarks on many a wandering journey of distorted guitar navigations.  Rust Never Sleeps builds on this even further, while simultaneously presenting an album-side of highly personal and organic acoustic contemplations.  Several years earlier Neil had introduced this aspect at its most extreme with Harvest, which may as well have been crafted specifically to be the greatest fall album ever made.  Decades later he saddled up the horse and delivered Ragged Glory, putting everybody in a classic car, roaring down the open road as the red landscape whirls by and deep, loud guitars fill the air.  

All hail the king.  

2. Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde

Ol' Bobby is another genius that could probably have several albums on here, but to me Blonde on Blonde stands above the rest in terms of fall music.  On Blonde on Blonde Dylan put forth a slowed down, slightly derailed version of the ramshackle rock he struck with his preceding album Highway 61 Revisited, added even more surreal imagery, and put the harmonica and acoustic guitars at the forefront of it all.  The result is a crisp, breezy, lightweight soundtrack to orange leaves drifting in the wind.  He occasionally takes this sound in a darker direction with the types of yearning ballads that would be explored to more devastating depths with Blood on the Tracks, but overall strikes the perfect balance between lighthearted whimsy and empty sorrow.  

3. Eddie Vedder - Into the Wild

Given its status as an original soundtrack, a handful of songs on Into the Wild suffer from underdevelopment and rushed endings.  That said, Eddie Vedder was the perfect man to capture the motivation and experience of rejecting society to withdraw into the wilderness, and he absolutely nailed it.  As a whole the album combines the driving rhythms of the open road with aural imagery of majestic untamed landscapes.  The primitive desperation to embrace nature and search for America among the death of autumn is undeniable.  

4. Husker Du - Candy Apple Grey

Husker Du's move to a major label led them to adapt their version of hardcore punk into slower, more heartfelt songs.  As a testament to their greatness as a band, the result was an extraordinary collection of their most genuine, expressive songs.  Nothing was lost in the melodically fuzzed-out guitars or the urgent emotion in the vocals; if anything, the more streamlined template brought out their strongest aspects even more.  Candy Apple Grey sounds symbolically like the strangely blissful ruminations of a man buried deep in the cold dirt under dry leaves, reflecting on how he wound up there and coming to terms with the fact that he will never get out.  

5. Pearl Jam - No Code

Mr. Vedder's second appearance in the top five comes in the form of the Pearl Jam album that saw him break through the "grunge" barrier and truly emerge as a powerhouse songwriter.  No Code, for the most part, trades the grimy guitars and howled vocals for the soft rhythms of folk and Eastern music.  The varying moods and instrumentation is unlike anything Pearl Jam, or the Seattle scene in general, had done before, and thusly it makes a strong impression while leaving much room for contemplation.  No Code takes the listener directly to the mental place that the band itself was in at the time, which is one of self-examination; preferably done while lying face up in a plowed field as the clouds roll by overhead on a brisk September afternoon.  

6. The Velvet Underground - Loaded

There's just something about the brilliant nostalgia of Sweet Jane and Rock and Roll that strongly evokes the windy arrival of cool air, the changing colors on the horizon, and the way we continue through life amidst the transition.  Put into this context the rest of the album plays as a temporary goodbye to the summer, and a joyous celebration of autumn's arrival.  

7. Built to Spill - Keep it Like a Secret

The fractured, fuzzy, wide-open soundscape of Keep it Like a Secret provides plenty of room for Doug Martsch's Neil Young-esque wandering, discontent guitar sequences, and also serves as the perfect platform for Martsch to nasally display his regretful, unsatisfied lyrics.  It is a very introspective album without ever being boring.  The overall sound has a unique vibe of nostalgia for that which is yet to happen, and it lends itself very well to the new-beginning brought on by fall.  

8. Blitzen Trapper - Furr

Furr is definitely rooted in the wistful breeziness of great folk music, but Blitzen Trapper creatively mixes in a certain backcountry spaciness through the instrumentation and song structures that make for a truly unique (yet not overly challenging) listening experience.  The sparse title track puts a somewhat abstract spin on the familiar "back to nature" theme, and fellow standout Black River Killer plays like an incredibly well-crafted vintage murder ballad, which leans slightly toward the paranormal with the synthesizer's entrance.  The rest of the album churns along with fuzzy folk and offbeat country, and if you close your eyes you might swear you were sitting in a log cabin on a chilly, mysterious late October night.   

9.  Uncle Tupelo - No Depression

Rustic blue-collar country meets grinding punk angst, and Jeff Tweedy gets drunk on the gravelly cocktail while belting out song after song of a beaten-down man medicating himself against the brutality of life.  It doesn't get muchmore "real" than No Depression, and it fits perfectly with the reality check that the crisp breeze brings in after the daydream of summer.  

10. The Decemberists - The King is Dead

"Here we come to a turning of the season".  That is how The Decemberists kick open The King is Dead, their 2011 departure from their usual literary style to their roots of woodsy, stomping, harmonica-laden folk.  What follows is 41 minutes of direct celebration of the undeniable celestial cycle that graces us with the beautiful inspiration of transitional seasons.  There is no better album at putting the fall season in perspective, and uniting us to raise a glass under its presence.  

MY FAVORITE FALL ALBUMS [PART TWO]