So after listening to Brady’s Autumn Shuffle last week, I was inspired to create a seasonal playlist of my own. I didn’t put quite as much thought into my list as Brady, rather I simply chose to create a list of songs and albums that I feel both musically and lyrically fit the mood of the season. Let me know if you have any songs or albums that you really fall for this time of year. I hope that this playlist makes your ears bleed til winter comes.
matt pond PA
I really love this group a lot and in fact I find that almost their entire catalog fits that autumnal season very well, especially Several Arrows Later. But instead of choosing a track from that album I thought I would kill two birds with one stone and include this excellent cover of another band that fits the fall season very well, Neutral Milk Hotel.
matt pond PA – In An Aeroplane Over the Sea (Neutral Milk Hotel)
Iron & Wine
Here is a guy I am sure you are all familiar with by now. Someone who like Nick Drake also got his first big exposure through the “Garden State” soundtrack. Well I find his contemplative lo-fi folk music to be great company on a sunny fall afternoon. One of my favorite things to do is to go for a drive in the fall while the leaves are in transition and this song I chose for you here is one of my favorite companions along the way.
Iron & Wine – The Trapeze Swinger
M83′s Saturdays = Youth
Saturdays was an album that I heard last year and it went in one ear and out the other without making much of an impact. But this fall it has penetrated down to my very core and has become one of my favorite records. And I attribute a lot of that to the season in which it was heard, both physically and in my personal life.
M83 – Graveyard Girl
Explosions in the Sky’s The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place
One of the best experimental quartets around. They were the first instrumental band that I was able to really get into and I find myself consistently going back to this album each fall. You might recognize them from their work for the soundtrack to “Friday Night Lights,” the television show.
Explosions In the Sky – Your Hand In Mine
The Radio Dept.
Here is another group that I would say has an autumn feel to their entire catalog. Something about their music just takes me back. It just puts me in this very retrospective mood. It’s not uncommon for music from my past to take me back to the time when it first captured me. But I just discovered this band about a year ago. I don’t know how they do it.
The Radio Dept. – Pulling Our Weight
Here are a few more tracks to help round out the playlist.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Newport Folk Festival. This historic event is taking place this weekend (Aug. 1-2) at Fort Adams Park in Newport, RI. Pete Seeger, one of the co-founders of the festival will actually be there performing both nights. Tonight he’ll be joined by Judy Collins. The line-up is pretty incredible, including both the legends of folk music and the contemporary pioneers. Yesterdays line-up was simply stellar with acts such as The Decemberists, Fleet Foxes, Billy Bragg, The Avett Brothers, Iron & Wine and more. I can only imagine what musical euphoria was experienced in Newport yesterday. Amazingly enough, today has just as great of a line-up with Joe Pug, Deer Tick, Elvis Perkins, Josh Ritter, Neko Case and of course closing with Pete Seeger and Judy Collins. I know what you’re thinking, and I feel your pain. Why can’t events like this take place closer to us. Well even though we may not have gotten to experience this historic weekend, thanks to NPR we don’t have to leave this weekend empty handed. The great folks at NPR Music have put together a 12-song folk sampler made up of artists that performed this weekend at the Newport Folk Festival. It’s a great playlist and is completely free to download.
So I love cover songs. It is one of the greatest joys to hear an artist take someone else’s song and make it his own. Now I know I have promised this before, but I really mean it when I say to you this time that I plan on bringing you a new great cover song every week. So to start it off, this week I bring you a new Iron and Wine cover in honor of their new album that came out last week. Here is a performance by Sam Beam and his sister of New Order’s classic song “Love Vigilantes” on Late Night w/ Jimmy Fallon. Once again Beam has managed to pull off the impossible by taking someone else’s song and making it much better than the original.
Iron & Wine fans will have much to be happy about next month. His new tour kicks off May 4th and should be one of his best yet. I actually have legitimate reason to believe that to be true. To decide his setlist for each of these shows, he allowed his listeners to get online and vote for the songs that they wanted him to play. So each set should have a new and unique flavor to it. Also each show will be played in a very small and intimate setting and will be recorded, mixed, and the put online for those who weren’t able to make it to watch. So this year it doesn’t matter where you live, you can still experience Sam Beam live in action over at Played Last Night.
Now for the really good news coming this May. On the 19th Sub Pop is releasing a new album called Around the Well, a collection of rare or previously unreleased tracks spanning from some of his earliest sessions to material recorded for 2007′s The Shepherd’s Dog. It will be a double-disc set with the first half filled with more raw and unedited recordings and more of a lo-fi feel. The second will highlight a more full sound of Iron & Wine as he is surrounded by other friends and musicians. The title comes from my favorite Iron & Wine track, “The Trapeze Singer” which was written for and can be found on the soundtrack to the movie In Good Company. The album not only closes with that song, but also includes three other songs that Beam wrote for that movie. Around the Well also brings us some hard-to-find cover songs such as New Order’s “Love Vigilantes” or The Flaming Lips’ “Waitin’ for a Superman” as well as his infamous cover of The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights.”
As if all that weren’t enough, we now have word that Beam is working on a follow-up to The Shepherd’s Dog that he hopes to release early 2010. Until then, I hope your ears bleed.
So after listening to Brady’s Autumn Shuffle last week, I was inspired to create a seasonal playlist of my own. I didn’t put quite as much thought into my list as Brady, rather I simply chose to create a list of songs and albums that I feel both musically and lyrically fit the mood of the season. Let me know if you have any songs or albums that you really fall for this time of year. I hope that this playlist makes your ears bleed til winter comes.
