After the oppressive days of summer—as if on some sort of seasonal schedule—October rolled into Oakland and my favorite time of year arrived. The chillier, darker-earlier days unlocked a desire to listen to female Canadian folksingers or singer/songwriters, or what have you. This sentiment was identical to the one I had three years ago when I recall making a little playlist of songs that I thought represented early fall: when apples always taste better and I think about making soups out of squash. The problem was that the playlist lost a few tracks over the years: it only contained one song, Christine Fellows’ What Makes the Cherry Red. Since Ms. Fellows is Canadian and female, I picked her to lend a guiding spirit to the missing genre of songs or if this couldn’t happen, then discover something new in a similar sonic category (a tad morose, a little quirky, a little intriguing: that sort of thing).
I remembered one forgotten artist’s name as being “odd” and hoped it would be as simple as viewing a Pitchfork Best Of List, but it wasn’t as easy as it being Barbara Morgenstern. Days followed of scanning Pitchfork and Said the Gramophone. Those were dark times when all seemed lost. Julie Doiron was a great source of encouragement.
And Mr. Muller has long had excellent taste in music. I recall his radio station being a source for new music. There, I rediscovered Jenny Owens Young and Laura Gibson so I followed that trail for a while.
Jenny Owens Young, for instance.
Then the final brainstorm: look in the confusingly named “Previous iTunes Library” folder in an older hard drive. There it was! Frida Hyvönen‘s finest tune, probably originally discovered after some milestone in thinking where I said “Every day I’m going to go to the music blogs and listen to everything and really stay on top of new and exciting music” and then stop after half a day. I had found "Djuna!" I should have just checked my Tumlbr from March and seen that I already had the foresight to remind myself.
Honorable mention: Essie Jain, Orillia Opry and Death Vessel, who sings like a pretty girl.