For your inner clotheshorse, fall is a great opportunity. Think of it as being a period of transition, an opportunity to bust out all those bitchin’ flannel shirts (or turtlenecks or longjohns or whatever suits your particular fashion sense), and get ready to start turning the heads of the appropriate gender. Remember, folks: it’s always best to leave something to the imagination. In light of that well-known fact, what could possibly be sexier than a bulky woolen sweater?

Take the time to appreciate some of the more subtle joys of autumn. You know, the way the angle of the sunlight changes, the nip in the air, the patterns created by the frost on the dogshit outside your door. That sort of thing. It might take a little concentration on your part, but soon you’ll be finding beauty all around you.

One thing that will definitely help re-thread your head for the fall is the new Kingsbury Manx CD, The Fast Rise and Fall of the South. It’s chockablock with spare autumnal psych-folk-pop, to the point where visions of falling maple leaves dance before your eyes while it plays. (If you have a CD player in your car, I’d advise listening to the disc at home at least once so you can become accustomed to this somewhat unnerving side-effect before you play it while driving.)

Comparisons are odious, yes, but sometimes they cannot be avoided. Case in point: singer/songwriter/guitarist Bill Taylor’s voice sounds very much like an American Ray Davies, if you can imagine such a beast. I would be remiss if I failed to point this out. There are a few Kinks-like flourishes here and there (“Ruins” strikes me as being something Ray might have recorded in the early 70s), but on the whole the Manx are their own band.

Instrumentation is on the Spartan side, I suppose. It’s mostly acoustic in nature (guitar, drums, piano), with bass and organ coming in on the electric side. Keyboards do most of the heavy lifting here, instrumental-hook-wise. There are a couple of electric guitar spazzouts here and there (“1000 8”, “Nova”, “Ol’ Mountainsides”), but it’s not nearly so overtly psychedelic as their previous outing, Aztec Discipline. There’s nothing beating you over the head here; it’s more on the sneaky side. I find myself humming bits and pieces without immediately recognizing where they come from. Summer is the showy, obvious time; autumn is the subtle season.

And, as I said, it’s an autumnal vibe overall. What’s that mean? The album has a slight melancholy tinge to it, while still seeming mostly upbeat. I dunno, maybe you have to be inside my head to get that (watch out for spiders!), but that’s the best approximation I can come up with. The relationship falling apart on “What A Shame”, the reference to “hard days to come, with a burden on your back” on “Harness and Wheel”, the line “they lie to me / don’t let them tell you how it’s going to be / don’t cry to me / the last thing I need is a half-broken girl” from “900 Years”, just about all of “Oh No”, aside from the brief mention of a “sign of good things to come”… these things, among others, leave a slightly sad feeling on the mental palate. And yet, and yet, there are the swinging drums and bass on the jaunty “Ruins”, the repeated references to “animal dreams” and the amiable piano/banjo interplay on “Animations”, the graceful waltz of “Snow Angel Dance”, the cheerful electric piano figure on “Nova” (which also features the line “I’d like to smother the heat of summer / like breathing fire”) to leaven the somewhat downcast tone.

Happy/sad – it’s fall again! Get used to it.

(Kingsbury Manx's The Fast Rise and Fall of the South will be released September 20, on Yep Roc Records.)