Discover Hidden Gems: Fall (and Halloween?) Finds

Is your Halloween costume ready?? Personally, I've already been in my costume all autumn as Asocial Melancholic Indie Teen (which is quite difficult, because irl I am actually very well-adjusted and cool!), completed with a full set of tote bag, headphone, and earthtones.

Anyways, if you want to steal this look, don't embarrass yourself in front of all your Spotify friends by playing your music from Summer, it's time for a fall playlist! This 5-hour playlist is put together by the hardworking folks of Music Team, and it's filled with gems you've never seen before along with some indie classics. In this newsletter, we picked out some of our favorite tracks to feature and rated them on their fall-ness in a scale of 🧣 to 🧣🧣🧣🧣🧣. At the end of this newsletter, we've also put some Halloween picks so you can spice up your playlist for this weekend!

Sleepless Nights - Garden of Mary

A scooter ride on a crisp fall night, mourning summer’s warm embrace.

Few bands have tried to emulate the uniquely melancholic tone of 80s goth rock in todays music. Garden of Mary however has absolutely nailed it with their song ‘Sleepless Nights’ of their EP The Agony In Memory. This track features the best parts of goth rock such as flanger soaked melodies, interesting bass hooks, and moody subdued vocals, leaving out the kitchy overused tropes of goth rock like deeply cryptic lyrics (I’m sorry but too many bands try to sound like Type O Negative or Fields of The Nephilim and I’m jaded) or overemphasised synths. The song also features a solo that sounds akin to some of the chromatic masterpieces put out by Robert Smith in Seventeen Seconds.  -C.S.

Notes -

• FCC safe
• Genre: Gothic Rock

🧣🧣🧣🧣

nigatsu no heitai - The Cabs

A long drive through the forests of amber leaves of Maryland, seeing the flocks of geese journey north in the distant sky.

The combo of Midwest Emo and Math Rock has been proven to work time after time, and here again we see a track with deep rhythmic and melodic complexity, creating a melancholic serenity that can be appreciated by everyone. The Cabs was a Japanese band active around the late 2000s and early 2010s, and we hear from them a guitar tone even brighter than the usual clean Math Rock guitar. For better or for worse, The Cabs does not sing in the signature Midwest Emo “whininess”, but still leans into the screaming element of emo music.   -J.L.

Notes -

• FCC safe
• Genre: Midwest Emo, Math Rock

🧣🧣🧣

Blame it On Yourself - Ivy

It’s fine to procrastinate sometimes, time to impulsively bake some pumpkin bread!

This track was released by the American Indie Pop band Ivy in 2001, but its lowkey pop melodies fit seamlessly in the 2020s indie girlie™ soundtrack. This is “what if Nintendo DS Lite (pink edition) gained sentience to produce a hit single”. This is “what if Rebecca Black became a christian fall girl in an alternate reality (in this timeline she’s also French)”.  -J.L.

Notes -

• FCC safe
• Genre: Indie Pop

🧣🧣🧣🧣

Celery Stalks at Midnight - Doris Day

A relatively obscure entry into Doris Day’s long and storied career as a singer and actress, Celery Stalks is a prime example of the type of big band sound that dominated the American airwaves in the 1940s, with a fun Halloween twist. Clocking in at just over three minutes, it follows the basic big band skeleton to a T: A blazing minute-long horn intro by Les Brown’s band is followed by a clear vocal delivery that lists various Halloween imagery, before finally concluding with another minute-long horn outro. It feels ancient, the type of cutesy tongue-in-cheek song that would be buried as youngsters became involved in the arms race of increasingly vicious rock n’ roll a generation later.

However, the song can be a fright in itself. The singer seems distant and melancholic, even if the lyrics are supposed to be light-hearted (singing of fever dream imagery of sentient celery). It reflects “a peculiar aching quality of these [big band] songs that are [melancholic] even at their most ostensibly joyful”, evoking the feeling without actually sounding like it. The modern ear seems to be particularly sensitive to this dissonance, with big band music making into media like The Shining, Fallout, and ambient musician The Caretaker’s magnum opus, Everywhere At The End Of Time. Turned on its head, the pre-rock innocence can be made to feel near-diabolical. What’s a better spook than that? -M.G.

Notes -

• FCC safe
• Genre: Big Band

🧣🧣🧣🧣

The Redeemer - Dean Blunt

Walking through a graveyard for no other reason than: It’s Fall.

Dean Blunt creates an atmosphere so cold and melancholic in his track ‘The Redeemer’, it was unanimously voted as a five scarfer by music team. The song features elements so unapologetically fall, you’re left to assume it was done on purpose. This includes organs that sound like they’re straight out of a Hitchcock film and a strings section that paints a picture of leaves anxiously falling the through the fall air. The track constantly toes the line between ethereal and suspenseful which keeps the listener simultaneously engaged and uneasy in the best ways.  -C.S.

Notes -

• Not FCC safe
• Genre: Art Pop

🧣🧣🧣🧣🧣

I Figured You Out - Mary Lou Lord

Journaling after a real good cry (and it’s still fall time btw).

Mary Lou Lord creates a vibe that is best described as “christian-girl fall” with the acoustic track ‘I Figured You Out’. Before becoming the quietly illustrious artist she is now, she spent time in London busking on the street. Her setlist consisted of songs by Elliot Smith, Shawn Colvin, and Daniel Johnston well before their rise fame. These influences are indisputabely strong in this track as she delivers warm vocals over beautiful major chord resolutions.  -C.S.

Notes -

• FCC safe
• Genre: Singer-Songwriter / Indie Pop

🧣🧣🧣🧣🧣

Let’s Go to Trader Joe’s - Dana and Alden

Come with me to Trader Joe’s to shop for the Thanksgiving dinner tmrw?

If you haven’t already seen Alden a.k.a. @gucci_pineapple on your IG reels, take this occasion to check some of their laid back, alternative, jazz/r&b tunes! It’s if you take Tyler the Creator’s singing style from Igor, but laid upon more whimsical production and a killer sax.

Notes -

• FCC safe
• Genre: Neo-Soul, Jazz Pop

🧣🧣🧣

Longa 79 - al massrieen

You and your gang doing the silly dance in your coordinated Halloween costume.

Another hidden Habibi Funk classic band, Al Massrieen was an Egyptian group active in the late 70s/80 that seeked to modernize Egyptian music. The wonderful tune of Longa 79 is at times silly, at times beautiful, and at times rhythmic and hypnotic. Though it was most likely not produced with this intention, the song appears like a Halloween anthem to the modern American ear, reminiscent of Scooby Doo or the Boogie's Boys from The Nightmare Before Christmas.  -J.L.

Notes -

• FCC safe
• Genre: Habibi Funk

🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃

Harvest Heartbreak - horsegiirL

Unapolegitcally busting it tf down at a Halloween party (dressed as a horse).

Don’t you hate it when you’re a horse and your farmer dumps you for a different horse with a nicer mane? HorsegiirL reflects upon these feelings in her track ‘Harvest Heartbreak’. The song is infectiously groovy and unmistakably catchy with a dreamy synth arrangement and a sharp bassline. After spilling her guts about the heartbreak this douchebag of a farmer has put her through, she delivers a message that should ring true to us all:

Oh well

That's life

And I heard

There's a new farmer in town

-C.S.

🎃🎃🎃🎃

Notes -

• FCC safe/Not FCC safe
• Genre: Trance

If You Shoot the Head You Kill the Ghoul - Jeffrey Lewis

It’s probably fair to say that at this point that New York anti-folk musician Jeffrey Lewis is a cult artist. Repeatedly ridiculed by publications like Pitchfork, Lewis has found a loyal fanbase among those who celebrate his idiosyncratic and unapologetic reflections on what it’s like to constantly be on the losing side of life (the writer of this review is no exception).  

While other loser-troubadours (Loudon Wainwright III, Townes Van Zandt, Abner Jay) stuck to personal qualms, Lewis follows a more Blaze Foley-esc approach by incorporating highly specific pop culture references into his music. In this case, he’s never hidden his love for horror, so a song based on George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (newscast samples and all) should come as no surprise.

Punchy and fast-paced, Lewis’ punk sensibilities come out (see Cult Boyfriend as another example) as he sings specific instructions on how to kill the “ghouls” (i.e. zombies). But, paired with his strained vocal style and Spaghetti Western-esc melodies, it firmly reasserts its anti-folk position.

With one of Halloween’s most popular protagonists as its subject-matter, constant references to one of horror’s most beloved flicks, and paranoid in all the right ways, it’s hard not to consider If You Shoot the Head You Kill the Ghoul a certifiable fall thrasher. -M.G.

Notes -

• Not FCC safe
• Genre: Anti-Folk

🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃