A Very Birdbath Halloween
by Zac Bentz
You guys, fall is finally here. I know it’s a cliché for a film major with a sweater collection and a Letterboxd Pro account to laud the arrival of the season best suited to staying in and watching movies, but these past few days of clouds, rain, and highs no higher than 55° have really kicked my autumnal energy into high gear. I do this thing where I categorize my memories seasonally, and I organize those seasonal memories in terms of the music that soundtracked them, so I thought that, in celebration of fall and the impending arrival of Halloween, I’d compile a playlist of some of the music I personally associate most strongly with the season. Maybe it’s false advertising to call it a Halloween playlist (although there are certainly some certified spooky cuts on here), but when I think of this time of year, it’s these songs that I’m thinking of.
It’s also linked here, for anyone who’d like to listen along.
Clipping - Nothing is Safe
There’s nothing more quintessentially late-October to me than Clipping’s pair of horrorcore hip hop records, There Existed An Addiction To Blood and Visions Of Bodies Being Burned. This track in particular just feels like a kick-ass horror movie. The lyrics are so vivid and image-driven, and the single-note rhythmic piano hook feels ripped straight from a John Carpenter score. The perfect way to kick off the list.
TV On The Radio - Young Liars
Every time I hear the opening seconds of this song, that strange, uncanny hi-hat beat that swells into a whirlwind of spooky, groovy synth pads and Tunde Adebimpe’s ghostly vocalizing, I’m back in the backseat of my brother-in-law’s car, driving through downtown Eugene in the pouring rain, hearing what would ultimately become one of my favorite fall bands for the first time.
Digable Planets - Time & Space (A New Refutation Of)
Slip, slide, dip then take a dive. Everything off this album feels so west-coast-rainy-day. It’s so deliciously groovy and hard-hitting, with the perfect blend of jazz and funk that makes even the gloomiest of gloomy days feel upbeat.
The Cure - Inbetween Days
It wouldn’t be a fall/Halloween playlist without an obligatory appearance from The Cure, and this is simply one of my favorites. It puts me in such a perfect mood. That bassline, the acoustic guitar, COME ON.
Kate Bush - Oh to Be in Love
A recent addition to the canon, but already an absolute all-timer. Kate Bush is the queen of choruses – the first time I heard this song I was the littlest bit stoned, and the way her voice rises during that final “Oh to be in loooo-ooooove and NEVER GET OOOO-OUT AGAIN” sent my brain spinning into oblivion.
Jonathan Something - Spooky Delight
A perfect little tongue-in-cheek werewolf story wrapped up in a cozy little laid-back folk rock song by one of my all-time favorite artists, who I got to interview for a paper once and who I chat with via Instagram DM every time he releases music (but I don’t like to brag about it).
Yo La Tengo - Autumn Sweater
Fall 2020 uncovered some of the stranger entries in my fall canon, but this is one of my favorites I listened to that year. Ira Kaplan’s breathy vocals that almost disappear into the borderline-discordant synth pad melody puts me in that perfect venn-diagram middle ground between comforted and restless that this spooky time of year is so distinctly good at fostering.
Woods - Hollow Home
This is another pull from my Fall 2020 canon. It feels like home to me more than any other song come this time of year. Walking through downtown Eugene in the late evening after the cold has fully set in, feeling my jacket brush against my hair, gazing into the warmly lit windows of bookshops and cafes and stores full of handmade trinkets. It’s, like, a vast blanket of upbeat psychedelic warmth that never fails to make me feel profoundly at peace.
Drug Cabin - Handsome
Sitting next to the fountain in the courtyard of the 5th Street Market, bundled up in a jacket and a scarf and nursing a to-go latte, Drug Cabin powered me through my historical object reviews for my Ancient Greeks class and my Rhetoric, Gender, and Sexuality readings. They served as the soundtrack to my COVID semester back in 2020, and they’re always one of the first places I go to welcome back the season.
Kate Davis - Burning Accidents
This is an indie folk track through and through, but it’s got this strange, alluring gothicism to it (especially in that chorus, oh my god) that’s almost… unlike anything I’ve ever heard? I don’t know, there’s some indescribably autumnal haze to it that keeps me coming back to it year after year.
Jon Brion - Here We Go (from Punch-Drunk Love)
Now this… this is a special one. Punch-Drunk Love is one of my favorite films ever made, and this song is made up of motifs from Jon Brion’s absolutely rapturous score. The song is so quaint and beautiful, and it blends soft rock with classical instrumentation in this crazy way that sends an impossible tornado of both profound warmth and deep chill through my whole body. It’s nowhere near as abrasive as the movie is, but it still leaves me with the exact same feeling of melancholy.
Diane Coffee - Not That Easy
Glam rock is alive and well, and it’s all thanks to ex-Foxygen-drummer pop sensation Diane Coffee (Shaun Fleming), whose 2015 album Everybody’s a Good Dog is like if David Bowie had a twin brother who was really small and flamboyant and loved to wear big hats. Seriously, listen to this song, and listen to the album. It’ll send you flying into another dimension – one full of catchy hooks and insane power-pop energy and heavenly background harmonies and synth solos so gnarly and psychedelic they could have been ripped straight from a Herbie Hancock cut.
Laura Marling - Salinas
Across both her solo career and her side project LUMP with producer Mike Lindsay, Laura Marling has put out some of the most hauntingly beautiful folk I’ve ever heard. This track is one of her best. It showcases her phenomenal ability to switch back and forth between soaring angelic melodies and borderline spoken word, and her mystical, poetic, introspective lyricism never fails to make me feel a little small and insignificant – and not even in a bad way.
Strawberry Switchblade - Trees and Flowers
This is a newer addition to the fall canon, but come on. The coolest band name in the world, and it sounds the way it feels to step on a leaf.
Weyes Blood - Something to Believe
Imagine Joni Mitchell singing her heart out from deep beneath the ocean, and you’ll have a sense of what it feels like to listen to Natalie Mering’s absolutely phenomenal 2019 album Titanic Rising. This is by far my favorite track off of it, and maybe one of my favorite songs of all time. Cosmic melancholy.
Elliott Smith - Tomorrow Tomorrow
Bro it’s a fall playlist for a film and media studies publication, of course I’m putting Elliott Smith on here.
Tex Crick - Sometimes I Forget
This is the type of album you play on a loop on a rainy day while you putter around in the kitchen cooking dinner. Every song blends together, they share motifs, and it feels like being serenaded by a little jazz combo in the corner of a coffee shop, but it was recorded by one dude in his New York apartment. It’s magical.
Pavement - Type Slowly
I had to throw some Pavement in here. I typically associate Pavement in its purest form with other seasons, but this song has followed me loyally into the autumn, and it’s been soundtracking my drives around town a lot as of late. And only Malkmus begins a song this cozy with the lyric “Sherri, you smell different” and pulls it off so well.
The Stranglers - Everybody Loves You When You’re Dead
Bringing it back around with some genuine spook factor. This track is so quintessentially Halloween, and it’s also serves as the opening to my senior research project video essay about the connection between monsters and queerness!!
Bauhaus - Bela Lugosi’s Dead
A 10-minute goth rock song about Bela Lugosi (and maybe about the commercialization of goth?) was maybe the wildest way I could have closed out this playlist, but there’s no way I wasn’t going to include it, and somehow the end feels oddly fitting. This is such a classic at this point there’s not much I can say about it (it’s also a new addition to the canon, so I’ve got to give it some more time to stew). And I’ve already written 30 blurbs at this point. But I hope you found something to love in this list, and if you’ve made it this far, thanks for indulging in my musical musings. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!
Jonathan Something - Spooky Delight
A perfect little tongue-in-cheek werewolf story wrapped up in a cozy little laid-back folk rock song by one of my all-time favorite artists, who I got to interview for a paper once and who I chat with via Instagram DM every time he releases music (but I don’t like to brag about it).
Drugdealer - If You Don’t Know Now, You Never Will
Actually, my true fall playlist is just Drugdealer’s first two albums, The End of Comedy and Raw Honey. They’re put-on-in-the-background, play-on-repeat, let-it-wash-over-you albums that are filled to the brim with strange, groovy psychedelic jazz pop that’s perfect for a gloomy fall day. Whatever I picked from his catalog was going to ultimately be arbitrary, but this is a somewhat lesser-known one even among his relatively small fanbase, and it’s as autumn as it gets.
Actually, my true fall playlist is just Drugdealer’s first two albums, The End of Comedy and Raw Honey. They’re put-on-in-the-background, play-on-repeat, let-it-wash-over-you albums that are filled to the brim with strange, groovy psychedelic jazz pop that’s perfect for a gloomy fall day. Whatever I picked from his catalog was going to ultimately be arbitrary, but this is a somewhat lesser-known one even among his relatively small fanbase, and it’s as autumn as it gets.
Yo La Tengo - Autumn Sweater
Fall 2020 uncovered some of the stranger entries in my fall canon, but this is one of my favorites I listened to that year. Ira Kaplan’s breathy vocals that almost disappear into the borderline-discordant synth pad melody puts me in that perfect venn-diagram middle ground between comforted and restless that this spooky time of year is so distinctly good at fostering.
The Velvet Underground - Femme Fatale
I feel like there’s an argument to be made for the music of the Velvet Underground being perfectly suited to each season. But for me, they’re the unimpeachable royalty of autumn. And this song in particular… something about it captures that very, very specific feeling of, like, dragging yourself out of bed on a rainy day for an early morning class with enough time to grab drive-thru coffee and meander a little bit on your way back.
Leonard Cohen - Is This What You Wanted
I’m relatively new to the world of Leonard Cohen, but this song was such a phenomenal introduction. It’s jazzy, it’s melancholy, it’s strange, he sings about being a “dirty little boy…” and the production is so deeply warm and inviting, it’s like curling up next to a fire that shakes the last remnants of chilliness from your body.
I feel like there’s an argument to be made for the music of the Velvet Underground being perfectly suited to each season. But for me, they’re the unimpeachable royalty of autumn. And this song in particular… something about it captures that very, very specific feeling of, like, dragging yourself out of bed on a rainy day for an early morning class with enough time to grab drive-thru coffee and meander a little bit on your way back.
Leonard Cohen - Is This What You Wanted
I’m relatively new to the world of Leonard Cohen, but this song was such a phenomenal introduction. It’s jazzy, it’s melancholy, it’s strange, he sings about being a “dirty little boy…” and the production is so deeply warm and inviting, it’s like curling up next to a fire that shakes the last remnants of chilliness from your body.
John Wizards - Tek Lek Schrempf
Another group I discovered through my brother-in-law. He slipped me this recommendation right at the end of my first-year 4-day October break, and they were all I listened to for the next couple weeks. A strange, delectable blend of afrobeat and arpeggiated synthpop that makes me want to seek out the orangest tree I can find and lay under it for hours.
Twin Peaks - Dance Through It
Another group I discovered through my brother-in-law. He slipped me this recommendation right at the end of my first-year 4-day October break, and they were all I listened to for the next couple weeks. A strange, delectable blend of afrobeat and arpeggiated synthpop that makes me want to seek out the orangest tree I can find and lay under it for hours.
Twin Peaks - Dance Through It
Groovy bassline, an absolute hammer of a horn breakdown, and lyrics about dancing your troubles away. It’s perfect.
Woods - Hollow Home
This is another pull from my Fall 2020 canon. It feels like home to me more than any other song come this time of year. Walking through downtown Eugene in the late evening after the cold has fully set in, feeling my jacket brush against my hair, gazing into the warmly lit windows of bookshops and cafes and stores full of handmade trinkets. It’s, like, a vast blanket of upbeat psychedelic warmth that never fails to make me feel profoundly at peace.
Drug Cabin - Handsome
Sitting next to the fountain in the courtyard of the 5th Street Market, bundled up in a jacket and a scarf and nursing a to-go latte, Drug Cabin powered me through my historical object reviews for my Ancient Greeks class and my Rhetoric, Gender, and Sexuality readings. They served as the soundtrack to my COVID semester back in 2020, and they’re always one of the first places I go to welcome back the season.
Daniel Romano’s Outfit - Joys Too Often Hollow
Readers of Birdbath issue 2 (beyond just this article) will likely be aware that this is my favorite band in the world. This is the song I typically point folks toward when I’m trying to get folks acquainted with them. This was their first studio record released under the Outfit name, and while in my opinion it feels like a prototype for the next (and arguably best) record Cobra Poems, How Ill Thy World Is Ordered still has some of the best songs I think Daniel has ever written. This one’s my favorite off the album – it’s a lush, cozy pastiche of 70s folk psychedelia, which, granted, sums up a lot of Daniel’s work, but this is the most concise, approachable, and arguably perfect example.
Kurt Vile - Flyin (like a fast train)
Smooth, cosmic, psychedelic sweetness from Philly’s Constant Hitmaker. (watch my moves) is the transition season of albums – it’s a breath of fresh air, it’s not too hot and not too cold, and every time it begins, I just want to relish it for as long as I can. It’s both a perfect fall album and a perfect spring album. I listened to it for the first time while gazing out the window of a bus making its way through the Czech countryside. And this… this is just a perfect song.
DAISY - Way Cool Baby Love
Daisy Hamel-Buffa’s voice is like caramel dripping in slow-mo from the whisk that is the band’s phenomenal penchant for soulful, effortlessly cool instrumentals. This cut in particular just makes me feel like I’m the coolest MF on Main Street.
Smooth, cosmic, psychedelic sweetness from Philly’s Constant Hitmaker. (watch my moves) is the transition season of albums – it’s a breath of fresh air, it’s not too hot and not too cold, and every time it begins, I just want to relish it for as long as I can. It’s both a perfect fall album and a perfect spring album. I listened to it for the first time while gazing out the window of a bus making its way through the Czech countryside. And this… this is just a perfect song.
DAISY - Way Cool Baby Love
Daisy Hamel-Buffa’s voice is like caramel dripping in slow-mo from the whisk that is the band’s phenomenal penchant for soulful, effortlessly cool instrumentals. This cut in particular just makes me feel like I’m the coolest MF on Main Street.
Kate Davis - Burning Accidents
This is an indie folk track through and through, but it’s got this strange, alluring gothicism to it (especially in that chorus, oh my god) that’s almost… unlike anything I’ve ever heard? I don’t know, there’s some indescribably autumnal haze to it that keeps me coming back to it year after year.
Jon Brion - Here We Go (from Punch-Drunk Love)
Now this… this is a special one. Punch-Drunk Love is one of my favorite films ever made, and this song is made up of motifs from Jon Brion’s absolutely rapturous score. The song is so quaint and beautiful, and it blends soft rock with classical instrumentation in this crazy way that sends an impossible tornado of both profound warmth and deep chill through my whole body. It’s nowhere near as abrasive as the movie is, but it still leaves me with the exact same feeling of melancholy.
Diane Coffee - Not That Easy
Glam rock is alive and well, and it’s all thanks to ex-Foxygen-drummer pop sensation Diane Coffee (Shaun Fleming), whose 2015 album Everybody’s a Good Dog is like if David Bowie had a twin brother who was really small and flamboyant and loved to wear big hats. Seriously, listen to this song, and listen to the album. It’ll send you flying into another dimension – one full of catchy hooks and insane power-pop energy and heavenly background harmonies and synth solos so gnarly and psychedelic they could have been ripped straight from a Herbie Hancock cut.
Laura Marling - Salinas
Across both her solo career and her side project LUMP with producer Mike Lindsay, Laura Marling has put out some of the most hauntingly beautiful folk I’ve ever heard. This track is one of her best. It showcases her phenomenal ability to switch back and forth between soaring angelic melodies and borderline spoken word, and her mystical, poetic, introspective lyricism never fails to make me feel a little small and insignificant – and not even in a bad way.
Strawberry Switchblade - Trees and Flowers
This is a newer addition to the fall canon, but come on. The coolest band name in the world, and it sounds the way it feels to step on a leaf.
Weyes Blood - Something to Believe
Imagine Joni Mitchell singing her heart out from deep beneath the ocean, and you’ll have a sense of what it feels like to listen to Natalie Mering’s absolutely phenomenal 2019 album Titanic Rising. This is by far my favorite track off of it, and maybe one of my favorite songs of all time. Cosmic melancholy.
Elliott Smith - Tomorrow Tomorrow
Bro it’s a fall playlist for a film and media studies publication, of course I’m putting Elliott Smith on here.
Stephen Malkmus - Pink India
After Pavement broke up in 1999, lead singer Stephen Malkmus quickly assembled a new backing band to launch what ultimately became a highly influential solo career with a ragtag group of musicians called the Jicks. They debuted in 2001 with Stephen Malkmus’ self titled, and this is the standout cut by far. It’s soft and strange and lovely, with Malkmus’ signature stream-of-consciousness, oddball lyrics and weird sudden shifts from swung-eighths to straight-eighths. It’s the best of Pavement, but feels matured, and has a really clear vision. I still prefer Pavement, but solo Malkmus is so unapologetically fall, and I love it.
Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile - Continental Breakfast
After Pavement broke up in 1999, lead singer Stephen Malkmus quickly assembled a new backing band to launch what ultimately became a highly influential solo career with a ragtag group of musicians called the Jicks. They debuted in 2001 with Stephen Malkmus’ self titled, and this is the standout cut by far. It’s soft and strange and lovely, with Malkmus’ signature stream-of-consciousness, oddball lyrics and weird sudden shifts from swung-eighths to straight-eighths. It’s the best of Pavement, but feels matured, and has a really clear vision. I still prefer Pavement, but solo Malkmus is so unapologetically fall, and I love it.
Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile - Continental Breakfast
Okay, technically this isn’t a repeat artist, ‘cause we’re bringing in CB. I love this record. The two of them were fans of each other’s work, and just decided to make an album together, and this song is about their adorable intercontinental friendship (he’s from Philadelphia and she’s from Melbourne, Australia). I love how their distinctly weird and unique voices blend and harmonize – I don’t think either of them could have done this with any other artist but each other.
Tex Crick - Sometimes I Forget
This is the type of album you play on a loop on a rainy day while you putter around in the kitchen cooking dinner. Every song blends together, they share motifs, and it feels like being serenaded by a little jazz combo in the corner of a coffee shop, but it was recorded by one dude in his New York apartment. It’s magical.
Pavement - Type Slowly
I had to throw some Pavement in here. I typically associate Pavement in its purest form with other seasons, but this song has followed me loyally into the autumn, and it’s been soundtracking my drives around town a lot as of late. And only Malkmus begins a song this cozy with the lyric “Sherri, you smell different” and pulls it off so well.
The Stranglers - Everybody Loves You When You’re Dead
Bringing it back around with some genuine spook factor. This track is so quintessentially Halloween, and it’s also serves as the opening to my senior research project video essay about the connection between monsters and queerness!!
Bauhaus - Bela Lugosi’s Dead
A 10-minute goth rock song about Bela Lugosi (and maybe about the commercialization of goth?) was maybe the wildest way I could have closed out this playlist, but there’s no way I wasn’t going to include it, and somehow the end feels oddly fitting. This is such a classic at this point there’s not much I can say about it (it’s also a new addition to the canon, so I’ve got to give it some more time to stew). And I’ve already written 30 blurbs at this point. But I hope you found something to love in this list, and if you’ve made it this far, thanks for indulging in my musical musings. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!
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