Five albums that aren’t on your autumn playlist yet, but should be
Why Hotline TNT, Halloween, Spellling, King Gizzard and Bartees Strange deserve a spot on your fall playlist
“Seasonal” music goes one of two ways: thoroughly literal or an embodiment of how it makes people feel. Music that feels like fall is voluminous and has year-round allure in ways other seasons, in my personal opinion, can’t quite imitate. The way the little hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up when I hear leaves skipping across the pavement or walking through the smell of cinnamon in every doorway or indulging in ghoulish behaviors and gremlin-like thrill seeking…it’s exhilarating.
I’d like to put you onto five albums that live up to the nebulous and satiating rewards of this time of year, whether you celebrate with family or your chosen family, the feelings stay the same. Some local and some not, and in no particular order, the bands and artists behind the albums listed below – Hotline TNT, Halloween, Spellling, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and Bartees Strange – will set the mood.
Hotline TNT – Raspberry Moon (Third Man Records)
Midwest shoegazers Hotline TNT resurfaced early this summer with a new album, Raspberry Moon. The lineup has shifted frequently in the band’s history, this album, however, marks a big change for the often transient Will Anderson. Anderson has been one to demo dump in the past. However, Cartwheel tour band consisting of guitarist Lucky Hunter, bassist Haylen Trammel and drummer Mike Ralston were very much involved in the writing process this time, graduating from tour band to band band. Raspberry Moon feels like a reset and Anderson lets his hair down a little.
Overall, Raspberry Moon is hookier and isn’t a compression blanket of heaviness like Cartwheel (2023), “Julia’s War” being a great example of this and the strained relationships the album focuses on. Open guitar chords, dialed-in bassline and splashy cymbals from Ralston set the tone, gently pulling you in. A fuzzy cocoon, group vocals and stripped-back moments bake in key lyrics like, “Mark the score, Swap out the tiles, Won’t make you change your style.”
Another track to dip your toes in: “Break Right”. It features a soul-plucking keyboard melody from the “fifth member” of Hotline TNT, Amos Pitsch, owner and engineer of Memory Studio. Bassist Trammel creates an undertow that somberly carries “Break Right” away from hopelessness. As I alluded to above, the track is a chilled breeze at your back and rustling leaves skipping across the pavement.
Hotline TNT will be stopping at Johnny Brenda’s on 10/12 on their Raspberry Moon tour.
Halloween – Shadow House (Funeral Party Records)
Staying in a shoegaze vein, Halloween is an incredibly elusive four piece from Philadelphia who dropped their first full album in August. Shadow House is a spine-tingling, shadowy eight-track album that plunges into the back of the mind where unbridled imagination dwells. In whole, the album feels like an omen.
“Crown” reaches outwards in this way, guitarists and vocalists Sia Dokos and Justus Proffit’s harmonies intertwine, “Everyone’s afraid of something” followed by “Anyone who touches the crown speaks out loud, say it while you’re sleeping” on second pass. The echoing vocals and warbling guitars open a rift, the drumming (performed live by Jack Hale) and steady bass from Eli Sheppard adds subtle texture that keeps the listener’s feet on the ground.
If you listen to Shadow House in one sitting, which I recommend, the satiating waves of sound mesmerize and fuse reality with the present Halloween has written. Two songs that execute this well are “Tongue” and “Poison Well”, both start with a warping feeling that is overtaken by a galloping beat that quells the urge to look at your phone, “Tongue” being the dancier of the two.
I made a point to see Halloween’s Shadow House release show at Johnny Brenda’s on August 24th. The layers and complexities blasted from my car speakers or noise cancelling headphones then felt even more like an old gramophone possessed the band who now in turn haunts the listener (see “Spiral Staircase” or “Hall Of Mirrors”).
If you want to catch Halloween live, they will be playing at Khyber Pass Pub on 10/16.
Spellling – Portrait of My Heart (Sacred Bones Records)
The first and title track of Portrait Of My Heart creeps in with a rolling and cascading bassline. The energy of the song rises and falls, Tia Cabral’s vocals steer the listener through. The chorus is immense and emotional and is something you’d yell at the top of your lungs in a car, speakers turned dangerously high, or even better, at a live Spellling show.
This album hit me so hard it transported me directly to Coheed and Cambria’s 2005 Good Apollo I’m A Burning Star IV. The operatic, opus enormity of that album connects to Spellling’s latest album. Closer still, the expressive pitch and range that varies from song to song on Portrait Of My Heart is Claudio Sanchez coded. Spellling’s music stands on its own, to be clear, and I missed this style of music.
Tia, vocals and synth, has mastered experimental pop. There is rich texture found in each song, behind the synth she layers her vocals and inserts twinkling, nostalgic ’80s organ and warbling, futuristic flairs effortlessly. “Love Ray Eyes”, for example, comes to mind.
A big takeaway from Portrait Of My Heart: Tia’s vocal style is expressive in pitch and range and self actualization, not hyperawareness. In “Alibi”, Tia rejects the same old excuses for shitty behavior in an intimate relationship. Tia isn’t going to take them back ever again, and relatably, the song proves to be a recommitment to self. It’s honest in delivery, and the hook and chorus are insanely catchy.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Phantom Island (P(Doom) Records)
Beloved Australian “jam band” King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard released Phantom Island in June, cutely on a Friday the 13th. For those not in the know, King Gizz released their first album in 2012 and have not slowed down since. The band, which has pulled all of their music off of Spotify recently, have also released a bevy of 63 (and counting) live bootlegs on Bandcamp. A continuation of their ability to build worlds and lore, Phantom Island is an orchestral odyssey for their 27th studio album.
First and title track “Phantom Island” begins with a spine-tingling swell of horns, strings and percussion. These elements set the scene, it then expands like a bubble and pops into a funky bass and forceful trumpet melody that falls into the pocket. Sonically it feels like a plane soaring up and flattening after passing through the clouds. The orchestra facet of Phantom Island cradles the album with fantasy and whimsy.
In July, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard started their orchestral Phantom Island tour in Philadelphia at the Mann Center, nestled onstage behind King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. Led by conductor Sarah Hicks, the Philadelphia Orchestra translated the punctuating brass and sweeping strings heard on the album to a grand level. Along with a few tracks off King Gizz’s back catalog, the performance felt like nirvana.
Phantom Island is a vulnerable and tender output. King Gizz speak directly to their children, a difficult reflection of their lives. They wrestle with their own career/life decisions and a sense of ambition they want to instill in their children. They admit they really didn’t know what they were doing or how far the band would go. “Lonely Cosmos” and “Silent Spirit” are two heartstring-pulling examples, both fluctuate between buttery psychedelia, south Asian instrumentations and lyrical climaxes.
Bartees Strange – Horror (4AD)
Breakup albums have often been spiraling crashouts, but in other scenarios, like the one we find ourselves in with Bartees Strange’s latest album Horror, a match can be struck or a switch flipped. It’s a different Strange this time around from the Strange we knew before.
Bartees Strange promptly meets the listener at the door with the first track of Horror, “Too Much”. An ’80s key-guitar-esque layered melody we become familiar with punctuates the song, and, with increasing intensity, Strange pursues the listener with ambient noises and unshakeable rap verses. He goes, “I ain’t really at it for the crib, I was always at it for the kill, Screaming from the top of my lungs, I’m on Bening Road itching with a drill, I could put the red on ’em still, I just got the call, now it’s real”.
Later in the album, “Wants Needs” responds to “Too Much’s” testy attitude. Strange enters solo along with a quiet strumming of the melody’s chord structure and lyrically, as the song progresses, he gets more and more desperate in asking for his own, as the title suggests, wants and needs. This ultimately bursts into the exasperation which the chorus conveys.
Grief can be a funny thing. Apart from the death of a friend or family member, we grieve places, friendships or partners, jobs, and bands that break up at one point or another. Inescapably, where there is an end, there is a starting point. The best place to find this linchpin in Horror is in “Sober”. Bartees faces a crossroad that societally is growing: people are drinking less and this reflects on interpersonal relationships, namely romantic ones.