First, too easy joke – Nagoya dream-crafters Lullatone released an album devoted to the arrival of Fall on a day that saw some of the highest recorded temperatures ever recorded in Japan. Isn’t it ironic, etc etc.
Lullatone in 2013 is not that radically different from the Lullatone of a decade ago, at least when it comes to the overall theme of their music. They’ve always soundtracked small, everyday instances – usually with a childhood bent, songs about raindrops and sleeping and school and plastic toy record players. That hasn’t changed this year, as they went seasonal, first with the Summer Songs EP which celebrated ice cream, meat shopping and suntan oil. Falling For Autumn is every bit as innocent – save maybe for the wheezy carnival jam “An Awkward Dinner Conversation At A Family Gathering,” because too a kid nothing is really that awkward – with tracks titled “Here Comes The Sweater Weather” (which is an easy-breezy guitar-and-whistling number) and, best of all, “The Biggest Pile Of Leaves You’ve Ever Seen.”
What has changed – and it isn’t sudden, but something that happened sometime after (the still excellent) The Bedtime Beat is that Lullatone’s sound became richer. Whereas their earliest recordings were either computer-made bleep-bloop pop, or fuzzy recordings, there music since at least Elevator Music has been shinier. Everything sounds like an audition for a commercial – which is something Lullatone do, and it is to their credit that these tracks can be both jingle-worthy and emotionally evocative (Don Draper is nodding his head somewhere, if he was real) – and Falling For Autumn is just as rich. Every individual sound comes through clear – check the build to the short-but-strong “New Stationary For A New Semester.” Yet despite the increase in fidelity, Lullatone retain the youthfulness that has always made them so great. Get it here, or listen below.