It’s fall in Philadelphia, and Philly is a fall city. It’s not just the fact that the fallen orange and yellow leaves temporarily blanket the dirty sidewalk, or that the tube tops go away and more flattering clothes come out of the closet. It’s that warm, woody sound in the air, the energetic whistles of sharp gusts of wind, the crunchy, steady rhythm of cold-weather shoes on dry leaves. It’s like the city’s making music, ambient and instrumental, singing to us silently about our changing lives and her changing seasons.

When Kunek showed up on Freshout’s doorstep after the long trek from Oklahoma, even though it was July, their six-man, larger-than-life instrumentals brought out that feeling of beauty before bleakness that fall always implies. Kunek’s songs would occasionally shed their vocals leaving only the instruments’ bare grace the same way that the trees shedding their leaves suddenly shows the strange barren splendor of the fingerlike branches they once obscured.

Flight of the Flynns, Kunek’s most recent album, is a melancholy, aching, but charged musical description of fall in the city. Electricity flies through its twelve tracks, and the scene the songs paint is charged with September’s manic energy after a lethargic summer. The cymbals are crispy, crackling leaves under your feet. The piano is a cold breeze that sweeps by you and throws up a tornado of city dander, whipping up wrappers and plastic bags and fusing them with something so natural that they are temporarily beautiful and part of the city’s grace.

In September, for the first time in months, rain falls without leaving humidity in its wake. Dying leaves match brick walls, an ensemble of warm earth tones on a colder darker day. Flight of the Flynns is not flashy in its elegance like the spring, nor is it harsh in its extremities like summer and winter. It is gentle and calm, with as much appeal as it has rareness.

I’ve never seen Stillwater, Oklahoma, the town where Kunek formed, but I can imagine what it’s like there in the fall. The dry wind whips through the tall grass, spidery fingerlike branches slash up the dusky sky. The weather is a muse, feeding Kunek’s music with it’s mysterious spark.

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