The 10 Greatest Fall Albums of All Time

I am going to miss autumn. Once our climate’s transition to a perpetual monoseason is complete, our only way to chart the physical progression of a calendar year will be to note what type of hell weather is shrieking above our underground climate bunkers. I only hope my sons are as fond of wildfires and asphyxiating dust storms as I am of crisp, cool air and fall color.

Until then, I intend to wring as much enjoyment from the fall season as possible. A big part of that appreciation, for me, is music. While not necessarily a genre, per se, fall music has certain hallmarks: wistful, warm, reflective, primarily (but not always) acoustic, never too caustic or angry. It’s what the guy from this Onion article is pipping into his earbuds.

A perfect fall album aids the contemplation of change and its attendant loss, without ever pushing you into full-blown despondency. It’s vaguely decadent, turning a diffuse sadness into something cozy and consumable, the aural equivalent of slipping into a soft flannel while fondly recalling the long-ago ex you once wrapped it around. Great fall music smears the surface of the world with a soft-focus, melancholy glow.

I realize that, in some cases, this is a perversion of artistic intent, a Starbucksification of music that deserves to be treated with more maturity, and like the fetishization of fall in general, carries a whiff of unexamined privilege. That said, it all will be over soon enough. So I will take the small pleasures while they last, and celebrate one of our planet’s final autumns with good music. I only hope these albums sound as comforting in the sun-cooked, “Mad Max” future that awaits us.

1. Nick Drake: “Pink Moon”

Nike Drake might as well be the patron saint of fall listening. Drake, who died at 26 when he overdosed on prescription antidepressants, made hushed folk music that sounds as lovely as a breeze stirring the leaves on the ground or rustling the beard of a gentle hippie. What tethers his music to the earth, preventing it from being too ethereal and evaporating altogether, is the deep current of sorrow that runs through it.

Further gentle-English-folk fall listening: Fairport Convention’s “Liege and Lief,” Vashti Bunyan’s “Just Another Diamond Day”

2. Van Morrison: “Astral Weeks”

Van Morrison suffers a bad rap as “dad rock,” and it’s not necessarily unwarranted. “Astral Weeks” does sound like a bunch of dads in Birkenstocks decamped to the woods to make jazzy flute music about their old crushes. (I would’ve hated this album as a teenager.) But Morrison’s poignant longing for some idealized past, and the music’s rambling amber glow make it sound especially apropos this time of year — plus album standout “Cyprus Avenue” features a lot of nice fall imagery.

Further fall listening for dads. Wilco’s “Sky Blue Sky,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water”

3. Neil Young: “After the Gold Rush”

There isn’t a better song to shuffle around the woods on an overcast fall day being melodramatically morose to than “Oh Lonesome Me,” except for maybe “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” both of which are on Young’s third studio album. Young has two great albums with the word “Harvest” in them, both ideal for this time of year, but “After the Gold Rush” is a masterpiece, evoking equally heartbreak and lost promise, pairing beautifully with a season that lends itself to taking stock.

Further proto-Americana fall listening: Townes Van Zandt’s “High, Low and in Between,” The Flatlanders’ “More a Legend Than a Band”

4. Big Star: “#1 Record” & “Radio City”

The progenitors of power pop wrote the ultimate fall anthem with “September Gurls,” but their first two albums — reissued as a single release — are stacked with similarly potent distillations of teenage emotion. Never let a fall season pass without playing “Thirteen,” “The Ballad of El Goodo,” “Life Is White” or “I Fell in Love With a Girl.”

Other power-pop fall listening: Chris Bell’s “I Am the Cosmos,” Teenage Fanclub’s “Grand Prix”

5. The Byrds: “Sweetheart of the Radio”

Country rock pretty much began and peaked with “Sweetheart of the Radio.” The Byrds, steered by their spirit guide Gram Parsons, offer a loping, slightly off-kilter version of country music that’s richer, warmer, and (considerably) more pleasurable than a pumpkin-space latte.

Further country-rock fall listening: Sir Douglas Quintet’s “Mendocino,” Gene Clark‘s “No Other”

6. Patsy Cline: “12 Greatest Hits”

Classic country always sounds good, but particularly so on a fall night, preferably with beer and a back porch. This compilation of Patsy Cline’s best songs is brief but stacked, lacking a bum track and making a strong case for the virtues of a more unrestrained and maudlin form of expression than is currently fashionable. Further classic-country listening: The Louvin Brothers’ “Country Love Ballads,” Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Driftin’ Way of Life”

7. William Bell — “The Soul of a Bell”

Side A of Bell’s 1967 debut album is a sustained, slow-burn longing, like a banked campfire on the cusp of flaring up again. The combination of Bell’s voice, one of the most underrated in the Stax catalog, and Booker T and the MGs is as rich and enveloping as shrugging on a perfectly broken-in mackinaw.

Further soul fall listening: Don Covay ‘s’ “Mercy!,” Sam Cooke’s “Night Beat”

8. Bob Dylan: “Nashville Skyline”

I’ve always loved country-crooner Dylan, even “Self-Portrait,” an album that was widely considered a misguided curio until volume 10 of Dylan’s bootleg series, “Another Self Portrait,” collected a number of unreleased gems from this era and proved its fruitfulness. But ”Nashville Skyline” remains the apotheosis of Dylan’s singular take on countrypolitan, relaxing his inscrutability — a necessity for fall music — and somehow making him weirder at the same time.

Further hipster country/folk fall listening: Father John Misty’s “Fear Fun,” Nico’s “Chelsea Girl”

9. R.E.M.: “Murmur”

“Murmur” rolled folk, jangly pop, post-punk, and Southern mythology into something distinctive and immortal. It also, incidentally, sounds fantastic radiating from a car stereo on a bright October afternoon with the windows rolled down, the air pleasurably biting and the foliage resplendent.

Further college rock fall listening: The Go-Betweens’ “16 Lovers Lane,” Rain Parade’s “Emergency Third Rail Power Trip”

10. The Shins: “Oh, Inverted World”

Unfairly tainted by its association with a single scene in a bad movie, The Shins debut album is neither life changing, nor as dismissable as the moment that made it famous. “Oh, Inverted World” is pleasant, a virtue too often given short shrift. Who doesn’t want a collection of pop songs that sound as if they arrived on a breeze from somewhere far away, irrevocably altered by their journey — made sadder and more mysterious?

Further indie-rock fall listening: Bon Iver’s “For Emma, Forever ago,” Deerhunter’s “Halcyon Digest”