The first official day of fall was a few days ago, can you feel the season change yet? It was almost immediate this year, with a downpour of rain the second day of fall. If you live in Vancouver or around the Lower Mainland, you know just how much rain this part of the province gets. What I have noticed about this climate though, is that it cultivates the perfect atmosphere for moody, sad music, and our local indie and alternative rock bands pick up on that!

Melancholy just seems to stick to the culture around the West Coast of British Columbia, it’s something that is everywhere around you. In Vancouver, the stereotype is strong: lots of rain, grey skies, walled mountains, long drives, and anti-social people. Our music is what ties it all together to form that culture.

The bands around the lower mainland love their minor chords, reverb, slow tempos, atmospheric guitars and rough recordings. If you travel east to provinces like Ontario or Quebec, their music sounds much brighter and more polished, they could never create music quite like we do down here. I think bands like Mother Mother are a great example of this. Their music grew in popularity in 2020 when I was in middle school. Their albums O My Heart from 2008 and Touch Up from 2007 were staples in the dreary playlists around that time. Songs like Burning Pile and O Ana sound just like a fall day in British Columbia.

Now is the time of year where this kind of music is put back into regular playlist rotation, what kind of songs have you been listening to lately? Is it the same stuff you had on repeat at the beginning of June? I would like to bet your music taste has become a lot more melancholic than previous months. Vancouver has an incredibly unique atmosphere that you can’t feel anywhere else, and that is ever present in our music.

Malcolm Gillanders / Pexels

The next time you listen to your favourite British Columbia bands, listen to the tone of their music and see if you can feel the atmosphere in the sound.