So let’s go with what most would consider Blake’s opus, Overgrown, an album full of moody, synth-drenched tracks like “Life Round Here” and “Retrograde” that pair well with late-night drives, rainy-day runs or lying awake in bed staring at the ceiling and questioning the meaningless of your own existence. We could’ve opted for The Colour in Anything, but that felt a little too on the nose (just look at the album art). The question isn’t whether a James Blake album belongs on this list it’s which one? Before the uncharacteristically melodic and dare-I-say upbeat recordings on 2019’s Assume Form - an album that Blake made after falling in love with actor Jameela Jamil and moving to L.A., two decidedly sunny developments - Blake’s entire oeuvre was essentially autumnal: slow, dark, lonely, spectral. But if you’re the first in line for a pumpkin-spiced latte in late August and you’ve already got your annual trip to Storm King plotted out to take in the gorgeous foliage, fall music likely means something a little more majestic, full of intricate arrangements to match the season’s scenery and warm, inviting sounds to usher in the start of sweater weather. If you see it as a depressing buffer between summer relaxation and winter festivity when everything dies and you can never figure out the appropriate amount of layers to wear, maybe you turn to your favorite sad indie-rock guy with a guitar. What exactly makes a great “fall album” is subjective, and it depends entirely on how you feel about the season. Of course, the Seattle indie-folk group is hardly the only one whose music just seems to hit differently between September and November. “Summer is over” are the first words you hear on opening track “Wading in Waist-High Water,” and to drive home the seasonal shift, the album wraps up with Robin Pecknold singing, “Now the quarter-moon is out.” (As Pecknold recently told the Ringer, “coincidentally that’s the phase the moon that will be entering in on 23.”) It’s an unabashedly fall record from a band whose music has always brought to mind crunchy leaves and decorative gourds, and releasing it at this particular time of year feels like a stroke of genius. In a lot of ways, the record is the band’s way of leaning in to the flannel-clad image many already have of them. When Fleet Foxes announced last year that the surprise release of Shore, their fourth studio album, would be timed to the autumnal equinox, dropping at the exact moment summer officially gave way to fall, it seemed like a no-brainer.