Autumn in Audio: 9 Songs that Epitomize the Season

In the 1970s, Bruce Springsteen established himself as one of America’s most poetic, honest and exuberant rock musicians.  With his release of Nebraska in 1982, though, he offered something different: a collection of quiet, somber acoustic numbers that belied more of his folk musical heritage, evoking the likes of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan.  The only song that can be considered any sort of “hit” from that album, “Atlantic City” is about watching one’s past shrivel and die, and soldiering on in all futility anyways.  The production on the song is amazing, lending Springsteen’s usually dynamic voice a sense of exhaustion and world-weariness, and his harmonica sounds like wind whipping through empty branches.

Sometimes, subtlety just won’t do, and one of the perfect autumn songs ends up being a song about autumn.  (I mean, just look: it’s right there in the title!)  It’s no secret that I love the Kinks, and this song is no exception.  It’s a true ode to the season, cataloging all that makes it great: from a “poor rheumatic back” to “toasted, buttered currant buns,” it’s a true collection of autumns detritus, accrued like so many fallen leaves.

If I were to name my musical ideal, or if I were to be compared to one musician, it would be Neil Young.  So versatile yet so distinctive, combining the warmth and homey-ness of folk and Americana with the grit and edge of rock ‘n roll, he hits my musical sweet spot perfectly, and this songs is, without a doubt, my favorite.  His guitar work is capable and skilled without being showy or losing any musicality, with a warmth that comes through like the sun on a cool day.  Combine that with a voice that, with such distinctive timber and a wisdom that belies its age (24 at the time), sounds like creaky boards on an old bridge, and lyrics tainted with lament and regret, and you have a perfect autumnal masterpiece.

Continuing with that theme of regret, The Weakerthans’ debut album’s eponymous track is a litany of those things we let pass us by, from failed opportunities to a fleeting sense of happiness that we try desperately to cling to.  It’s  a song filled with “lists of I meant-to-says” and resignations.  Where Young adds a hint of anger to his song, The Weakerthans’ John K. Sampson simply lends a shrug.

Even if he weren’t a famous example of an artist who peaked early and left our mortal coil before he was ever full appreciated, Nick Drake’s music always embodied the autumnal, filled with quiet yearnings and desperation.  The cascading guitar drifts aimlessly, never landing or coming to a conclusion.  Combined with his lovely Scottish lilt, and the weeping cello, this is the perfect song to accompany any fall drive.

There’s a definite sense of exhaustion to the season, as if the summer has taken everything out of the world; its breathing has become more steady and its moving more deliberate.  It’s the loss and impending death of the season, though, that reminds us of all that we’re going to lose when we get to the end of that “moonlight mile,” and because of that, we cling to it that much tighter.  The verses to this song are so cold and unwelcoming, until  the warmth of the chorus gives us anything to hold on to.  We realize that everything, the winter and the summer, life and death, love and hate, are all fleeting, and we just need to find that one constant to accompany us on the turbulent journey.  “I am just living to be dying by your side.”

No song has ever painted a picture or evoked a time and feeling for me as vividly as this song.  Maybe it’s the sense of history from a purely human perspective – it’s the tale of the waning days of the Confederacy at the end of the American Civil War as remembered by a poor Tennessee farmer.  Maybe it’s the tears on the edge of Robertson’s voice, or the fact that he sounds nostalgic about a bitter defeat.  For whatever reason, it makes me mourn the loss of a cause I completely disagreed with, but is tied to the spirit and history of our country none the less.  It’s a song that feels both timeless and inexorably steeped in history.

About five years ago, I was sitting in the bar of the old location of the Bottom Lounge on Sheffield in Chicago, waiting for the next band to come on.  I was there specifically to see Lucero, but one of the openers was William Elliott Whitmore, who I’d never heard of.  All of a sudden, from the next room, I hear the same sound that you’re hearing: a dingy but soulful voice soaked in whiskey along with a twanging banjo, often accompanied by a percussive stomp on the stage.  In short, I hear something amazing.  And then I go into the next room, and I see that this is who is making this music:

Not what I expected, to say the least.  It ceases to amaze me how such a young man can evoke such a sense of age and wisdom, of being so beaten down and buried into the hard farm dirt of his home.  Any song of his is eternally autumnal, but I had to go with the one that ends with the smoke-choking death rattle.

Apparently, 1969 is the most autumnal year.  33% of this list was released that year: The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and Neil Young’s “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere”, and this song, which was apparently written for everyone.  Like most other songs on this list, it focuses on our shortcomings, on the things that, no matter how hard we try, we inevitably fail at.  And like most other songs on this list, it is deeply tied to the land and history, tangled up like gnarled roots.

Autumn is a singular season, not only in that it is unique and universal in the feelings and images it evokes, but in that those feelings and images are so limited.  When one mentions other seasons, different people will have disparate interpretations, depending on their experiences, but autumn is truly universal. Everyone knows what an autumn day feels like: that simultaneous rush of comfort and pleasure, with disaster and despair just nipping at your heals, warded off only by the sound of an acoustic guitar playing somewhere in the distance.