FUNNY you should post this! Wednesday, before leaving for my in-laws house, I wanted to pack a few CDs that, for me, best represented the Thanksgiving season. The first choice, without a moment's thought, was The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. Then I grabbed that live Dylan CD, from the Royal Albert Hall, or the Manchester Free Trade Union, or wherever. Then I grabbed my go-to CD for car trips, my favorite album of all-time, the autumnal Get Happy!!

Good call on "Get Happy!" being an autumnal album!

but it's practically winter already! It'll only be a matter of weeks and we'll be able to talk about how "God Only Knows" is the Beach Boys' Wintry-est album, what with its sleighbells and all.

no doubt, this is a re-tread topic for RTH, but a fave (of mine and many a Rocktowner, i'm sure) nonetheless.

How did we get through summer without commenting on "Skylarking"?

For autumn, I nominate Simon and Garfunkel's "Sounds of Silence" album as a definitive autumn work. Its opening cut, "Leaves that are Green" (with its chorus: "the leaves that are greeeeen...turntobrown"), really sets an autumnal tone. The album has a generally "bookish" feel, which has us all in the school library, like it's September or October.

Neil Young's "Harvest" is also a good sweater, cider, and pumpkin picking albums.

As far as Dylan goes, I think "Blonde on Blonde" works best for me in Autumn, but that may be based entirely on personal stuff. Don't know if that album is *objectively* autumnal.

And of course, there's "Rubber Soul" American, occasional R&B postures notwithstanding, all its its woodsy acousticness, espeically the intro to "i've just seen a face", has me thinking of taking a drive to see the leaves turn.

Is there something about the harpsichord that is especially autumnal?

I asked: Is there something about the harpsichord that is especially autumnal?

I answer my own question: for me, there is. It sounds like falling leaves to me, not snowflakes or raindrops. Is that just me?

Harpsichord in autumn? Maybe that's why those Left Banke records always seemed so autumnal to me.

Harpsichord is one of the most autumnal instruments - wistful looky-backness abounds. Team it up with an acoustic guitar and you're as golden as the leaves I just spent four hours raking.

You too? Even with the incredibly useful new household additions of one of those big green leaf funnels to put in the brown paper leaf bags and those giant claw-hand things to scoop the leaves with, I am currently rueing, as the song under question puts it, my poor rheumatic back.

On the other hand, my iPod has a sense of humor: it followed Boston's "Peace of Mind" with Waltham's "So Lonely."

How exactly is Get Happy autumnal? I don't hear it.

I think it's the colors of the album sleeve that put some of us in an autumnal frame of mind, Oats:)

As an connoisseur of the autumnal, might I suggest a Nick Drake cassette as you drive your rusting MG convertible (with the black canvas hood up and a damp wind whistling through the cracks) beneath an endless canopy of muted orange leaves, while the rain soaked road hisses beneath your floor boards and through your threadbare argyle socks. Then perhaps pop in some Zombies after stopping for petrol, maybe an acoustic Robyn Hitchcock record at a roadside stand where you purchase a bouquet of mums and thistle, and finally, as you sadly trudge back to your car upon discovering that your summer love with the long, flaxen auburn hair, willowy green eyes, and sardonic smile has fled her cozy apartment full of memories and desire, leaving no forwarding address with an uncaring landlady, you slip the Fairport Convention tape into the temperamental deck, throw back a gulp of whatever is leftover in your silver hip flask, and head off along the coast road as night descends.

Some other ones:

Blonde on Blonde
The first two Band albums. Hell, maybe Stage Fright and Rock of Ages as well.
Teenage Fanclub- Songs from Northern Britain
R.E.M.- Murmur
The Stones- Beggars,/i> Let it Bleed (maybe) and Ya-Yas.
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci- How I Long to Feel That Summer In My Heart. Trolleyvox, this is the Gorky's album I recommended to you last week. It seems almost tailor-made to the scenario in your post.

Hey, Trolleyvox! Forget driving down the Maine coast in a convertible while listening to Donald Fagen solo albums -- your fantasy is *much* better than my reality!

How exactly is Get Happy autumnal? I don't hear it.

I'm with Oats here. That album just screams summer to me, though it's a personal favorite, so I'm able to listen to it year-round. Perhaps the summer thing is personal for me, though I can see why the colors would make one think of fall. Then again, I'm not a very visually-oriented person. As far as the music itself, though, I tend to hear many of the Motown, Stax, Northern Soul and TSOP-flavored arrangements as summer-like also perhaps because I tend to view many of the songs in those styles as summer-like, too. Again, that could be personal, too, or just my warped take on things.