7 Essential Albums to Capture the Nostalgic and Reflective Mood of Autumn Season

Shorter days somehow call for tertiary colors and longing for unrealistic and made-up scenarios while the weight of the world is placed on top of a deciduous tree. So we might as well be blasting a folk classic while it takes place. As September is the unofficial yet most realistic start of the new year, autumn playlists need to gather a series of characteristics surrounding nostalgia and excitement for what’s to come in the next few months. To ease the process, we’ve gathered a compilation of albums that will give you an opportunity to breath during yearning season. Or maybe just match the vibe and act as a shoulder to cry on.

Stranger in the Alps- Phoebe Bridgers
Phoebe Bridgers might be one of the closest contemporary pieces of evidence we have that aura and energy roam through people’s bodies, because no one’s vibe has ever matched fall like Phoebe’s. She’s the Thursday of sad girl music; always feeling like a transit point between the longing for a past that always seems to hold happier memories, a distressing and disheartening present, and the anticipation for what the future may hold.

Stranger in the Alps wasn’t only released in October, but also includes already indie-folk classics like Smoke Signals or Motion Sickness, two of the most gut-wrenching yet comforting songs in Bridger’s career. It’s hard to find something as reassuring as a pensive guitar and a voice on the verge of breaking that confirms that your sadness isn’t primitive, and that there’s always a song to rely on. 13, to be more specific.


Haverst- Neil Young

No autumn compilation can overlook Harvest, Neil Young’s overall masterpiece, aside from also being one of the 70’s most important albums. Artists are brilliant not only

because of who they are, but because of who others are when they listen to them. The fact that 50 years are not enough to discard a whole range of feelings provoked in only 37 minutes shows not only the greatness of a singer, but also his depth and unreachable surface as a lyricist.

Harvest portrays Neil Young as a vulnerable voice who has surrendered to the idea that there is no greater sign of progress than the shamelessness of being vulnerable. Just like Young, autumn calls for a small sentimental truce in which the weakest emotions are the ones that really keep the soul afloat, and explores the changing of the seasons from an outsider’s perspective that allows the public to see themselves in the artist’s words as he proclaims: “I'm a lot like you, I need someone to love me the whole day through”.


Preacher’s Daughter- Ethel Cain

Following Florence Welche’s footsteps, there’s nothing as eye-catching as a mysterious character that keeps most of her identity inside a puzzling and mystical personality. Her remoteness from the public is only compensated by her lyrical bond with the audience, which she deeply cultivated in her debut barely two years ago.

Through a Southern Gothic aesthetic, Cain built an outstanding and sharp storytelling masterpiece that feels like an unbearable and ongoing sleep paralysis. An obscure storm that, in a similar way to El Mal Querer by ROSALÍA, will never fail to teach the audience to have a careful listen, tear you apart, and make you feel thankful for plainly being a side character. Preacher’s Daughter is definitely a hard pill to swallow, but one that we must take in order to develop empathy. In addition to a 13-track collection that only feels “appropriate” to be listened to under a thunderstorm.


Red and Evermore- Taylor Swift

Contrary to popular belief, Taylor Swift’s most autumnal album does not fall within the folk circle, but instead relies mostly on her sister-album Evermore, and one of her pop classics: Red.

Evermore’s inclusion is almost self-explanatory, not only because of its brown and reddish aesthetic, but also because of the bittersweet, fatalistic and contemplative flavor of its themes. Deep and serious voices that pave the way for a new starting point, nostalgia for the time that has already slipped through our fingers, and the low synthesizer accompanied by Aaron Dressner's bass, which never fails and is always obvious. As well as Bon Iver, HAIM and The National being the only featurings on the album. She was clearly on to something.

And she is evidently aware of the seasonal changes within her “eras”, as she opens the album performance with her song willow portrayed as a coven.

But speaking of her “eras”, we mustn’t forget Red (Taylor’s Version), her coming-of-age album that includes not only a 10-minute song referring to how autumn leaves fall to the ground just as harsh reality attacks the hopeless romantics’ hearts (as well as the loss of her favorite Gucci plaid scarf), but also some of the most heartbreaking and gut- wrenching lyrics of her career. And mind you, she was in her early 20s when these realizations hit her.

Fall represents youth and a shedding process that is always a pothole in the character- building process. But one that everyone must overcome.

Despite including some of the most successful pop hits of her career, Swift disguises her country, rock, soft rock and acoustic folk roots in the ambitions of a woman entering her main development and growth phase, with its ups and downs. As crisp as fall.


Everyone else is doing it, so why can’t we? - The Cranberries

To begin an album with a song titled Sunday can only mean that you expect the audience to fall into an unwanted “what if” spiral. A journey in which melancholy and hope go hand in hand to explain every matter of the heart with a delicacy only Dolores O’Riordan owned. A delicacy that, despite falling into each and every one of life's clichés, created Linger, Wanted, Dreams and Not Sorry, to hold you tight under an understanding blanket.

Music is sometimes ethereal and can make you think and approach confounding yet universally experienced feelings differently. There was clearly something in the water during the 90s, and the Irish are just something else in terms of mystic and identity.