August slipped away into a moment in time

For as long as I can remember, I've made summer and winter playlists. For the mid-year months, the track listing is full of bouncy, upbeat tracks that make you smile. Into the autumn, I swim through the darkness of my goth-iest impulses.

And as much as I love the brightness of summer, when the calendar flipped to September a few days ago, I was delighted. I know it's not officially autumn just yet, but in my head it's time for darker, more introspective side to come out.

That's why I think Taylor Swift's August has become one of her most popular tracks of the past few years, and easily among my favourites when I got to see her last (erm) August on the Eras tour.

The melancholy chimes with what a lot of people feel as the months switch and we begin to fall into the shorter days and longer nights that fill the end of the year. It's a wistfulness for the carefree days of summer, with the cosiness of autumn.

And as I sit at my desk writing this, I have Folklore playing through, while the most monstrous rain London has seen in many moons bounces off the pavement outside. These two complement each other perfectly.

I normally turn to The Cure's Disintegration around this period, too, but instead I've found myself pulled (with great intensity) toward the group's most recent album; Songs of a Lost World and the masterpiece that is Endsong.

That song, to me, feels like being pulled into the saddest, warmest hug. It's bleak and beautiful, forlorn and shimmering. It's a meditation on aging and darkness, musically brooding as it gradually builds to its intense climax.

Aside from the aesthetic similarities between Disintegration and Endsong, I think I'm drawn into its orbit for another reason. Supposedly, it was Robert Smith's fear of turning 30 that really fuelled the dreamy despair of the band's 1989 classic.

It was released just before I was born. And now I'm in my mid-30s, so older than Smith when he faced that existential panic, and his shift from an almost nihilistic perspective in the early '80s to a more grief-laden mournfulness of a life gone by is starting to feel more resonant.

Release radar

Speaking of the end of the year, it felt like Christmas came early during last week's New Music Friday; CMAT, Nova Twins and Sabrina Carpenter all dropped new full-length albums. That's a stacked and incredible lineup, if ever I've seen one.

I haven't had the time to properly immerse myself in all three yet, but surface-level listens have got me pretty excited. And Hayley Williams' singles collection finally got pulled together into an LP format for easier listening.

It's not a new track, but Eminem released a compilation album to soundtrack the new documentary, Stans. Which, unsurprisingly, has many versions of that now legendary track. The live version with Elton John from the Grammys is still as good as I remember it.