The first days of autumn can put one in a kind of melancholy contemplation, and it’s usually around this time of year that mountain gospel sounds best to my ear. The brisk air is good for contemplating things that are bigger than yourself. So, it’s Carl Rutherford coming through the speakers to tell us something about hard work and true faith, and all the hardnesses and tendernesses of life in this complicated, difficult, beautiful country. “Takin’ the Tops Off My Pretty Mountains” isn’t directly about God or Jesus or the hereafter, but if Carl’s painful homage to the sacred mountains of his home isn’t gospel, I don’t know what is.

— Zoe Van Buren