AVQ&A: What pop culture feels like fall to you?

Gilmore Girls is a cliché pick, but can you blame me? Even the revival’s four episodes on Netflix are named after seasons, such is the inherent association of the series with it. As soon as the temperature dips, the leaves turn color, and the smell of pumpkin spice fills the air, my brain is fine-tuned to pressing play on Gilmore Girls. Rewatching the show during this time is akin to donning a cozy blanket because everything about it is comforting. It’s easy to get lost in the eccentric yet beautiful aesthetic of Stars Hollow—even if it means waiting five seasons to get to Matt Czuchry (yes, I’m proudly Team Logan). The visuals, outfits, and even the music lean into this vibe. It’s a case of classic conditioning at this point, but I’ll always gravitate towards GG’s iconic “la la la la” once October’s cool weather hits. [Saloni Gajjar]

Don Henley’s bittersweet, sing-along-worthy hit captures that almost instantly nostalgic pang that comes with realizing that your summer fling—and, indeed, the season itself and all of its sun-kissed good times—is gone, caput, finito. (To be fair, the Eagle could have been writing about youth from a distance, looking back on warmer days long since passed.) In this cover by Papercuts, Jason Quever’s always-stellar indie-pop project, the breathy vocals and coats of reverb make the narrator feel all the more fragile and shaken. “Nobody on the road / Nobody on the beach / I feel it in the air / The summer’s out of reach / Empty lake, empty streets / The sun goes down alone,” starts the song. And in this rendition, any promises to “get you back” and  “show you what I’m made of” feel defeatist. It’s a bye-bye-summer bummer for sure, albeit one with one hell of a catchy chorus. [Tim Lowery] 

I’m a year-round hot coffee drinker, but there’s nothing like a cup of black coffee and a pastry (or a slice of pie) when there’s a chill in the air and the leaves are turning. Also, maybe, when your uncanny town is hiding something from you. Twin Peaks thoroughly embraces the creepy side of filmmaker David Lynch, but it also embodies his cozy, feel-good sense of Midwestern “carpe diem” that comes naturally colored by melancholy. To me, fall is all of it: spooky season, the season when the heat finally breaks and I can read outside in a sweater, and the season of pre-winter reflection before I’m trapped under feet of Chicago snow. Watching Twin Peaks is the annual tradition capturing this soothing (but not too soothing) complexity, led by Angelo Badalamenti’s impeccable theme and Dale Cooper’s ever-powerful thumbs-up. [Jacob Oller]

If you’re anything like me (and, it seems, a number of my colleagues), fall is as much about processing that the year is almost over and there’s still so much to be done as it is about chai lattes and pumpkin pie. Haley Heynderickx’s I Need To Start A Garden perfectly captures that manic October energy, as the Portland-based artist wails out the album’s title and a cadre of other tasks she’s neglected in “Oom Sha La La,” before closing with the lines “and everyone’s singing along/the good and the bad and the gone” in the meditative final track “Drinking Song,” which feels just like watching the last leaf of the season slowly float to the ground. Heynderickx released her debut record in 2018, but the songs feel a lot more lived in than their mere six years. It’s like your favorite fall jacket in LP form. [Emma Keates]

Autumn is just about orange leaves and warm cider; it’s a moody season, the time of year where you’re forced to accept you’re about to spend months in the darkness. For me, Mariah Carey’s 2018 album Caution totally compliments the cool evenings that creep up earlier and earlier and the Thanksgiving drives when the leaves have long since hit the ground. The sensation may be best preserved in “Giving Me Life,” which seems to hit the ear like a sharp gust of wind. The synths and Carey’s vocal stab at you; they’re not quite icicles, but they warn that icicles aren’t far away. [Drew Gillis] 

Despite what the calendar (the Gregorian one, anyway) might tell us, I tend to view the fall as the real start of a new year—probably because that’s when the new school year starts. Felicity begins in much the same manner, with its namesake heading off to college and ditching the sunny California clime for actual weather in New York. She might have initially traveled all that way for a boy (completely understandable when it’s Scott Speedman), but Felicity ends up finding herself…in some of the most enviable sweaters, including the missing link between Billy Crystal’s fisherman sweater and that Knives Out number. But it’s more than just the cozy knitwear; Felicity is just as in flux as the weather, caught between two boys with fantastic heads of hair, and her own warring feelings about the path laid out for her. And just like the change in season, things get darker for our curly-haired protagonist before the sun comes out again. [Danette Chavez]

Living in Los Angeles, I usually only experience fall through pop-culture osmosis. Every time I play Strange Horticulture, I’m immediately transported to New England in mid-October, no matter where or when I boot the game up. It’s impossible not to feel cozy, warm, and just a little witchy when you’re tending to a plant shop, creating herbal remedies for the townspeople, and investigating uniquely small-town mysteries involving witches and cults. Okay, maybe that last one isn’t super universal or specific to fall, but the game as a whole just feels comforting, perfect for passing a few hours inside on a chilly fall day. [Jen Lennon]

Maybe it’s the schoolyard imagery, Outsiders allusions, or the song “Fall Semester,” but The Get Up Kids’ Four Minute Mile is the first album I pull when the leaves start changing. It’s a transportive record for me. Throwing it on every fall, I’m taken right back to my walk home from high school. My backpack is too heavy, and the weight of all the humiliating things I did that day is ringing around my head. The angst of the album, the scrappy, angular chords, and twinkly guitars on the verge of a sour note ache with regret and determination. It’s not the back-to-school album; it’s the back-in-school album, living in that third week of classes when cliques have settled, reputations feel set, and you have nothing but a Discman and a close circle of friends. Four Minute Mile is a double-palmed mug of cider I drink every autumn. [Matt Schimkowitz]

You could make a case for Adult Swim’s Joe Pera Talks With You as a definitive autumnal show, period: Pera’s gentle, sleepy voice, which lobs perfect deadpan jokes at viewers at its own relaxed pace as it travels through the minutiae of his character’s life, fits the cozy vibes of the season like a warm beige sweater. But no episode captures that feeling better than season 1’s “Fall Drive,” in which Joe brings us along in his 2001 Buick Park Avenue to dispose of his annual jack-o-lantern, and hopefully regrow a portion of his soul. Slyly funny, and surprisingly beautiful, it’s a nigh-perfect 11 minutes of television, traveling in lazy circles through the odd, uncynical tributaries of Pera’s mind, the unhurried tempo a feature, not a bug. By the time it’s over, I always feel just as restored as he does—and craving a Warm Apple, to boot. [William Hughes]

Fall is famously the season of Dark Academia, so that’s what I’m reaching for on my shelf as soon as there’s a chill in the air. The gold standard is of course Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, but why not go extra autumnal and add some ghosts and magic? That’s what you can expect from Leigh Bardugo’s excellent Ninth House, all about the secret societies at Yale and the twisted ways that privileged Ivy Leaguers exploit magic. It checks off the back-to-school collegiate box as well as a witchy spirit that strikes a chord for the upcoming Scorpio season. Plus it’s really good, and holds up on the re-read. [Mary Kate Carr]