The average college campus yields several student-run Halloween parties on or shortly before Halloween in an attempt at sustaining the playful youth of life before students become adults. Why should costumes and apple-bobbing end because you are now responsible for filling out a W-2 form? With every party comes music, yet while Christmas music is its own specific genre with its own label at the record store, Halloween party playlists either take from Top 40 radio, personal favorites or the same vintage novelty songs, so overplayed they no longer count as uniquely vintage.
This is a shame. Halloween should expose listeners to music that reflects the creepiness of the holiday; the speakers should air not conventional bubblegum pop but music that disturbs the listener more than the store bought plastic skeleton hanging on the front door. Thus, here are some spookily eclectic tracks, in no certain order, to spice up your Halloween trick or treating.
1. Swans – “Time Is Money” When no-wave started infiltrating underground dance floors in the mid-’80s, experimental rock band Swans (“The Beggar”) reached no. 8 on the UK Indie chart with their sonic assault on the ears, “Time Is Money.” Swans were progenitors of the burgeoning genre of industrial along with Throbbing Gristle (“20 Jazz Funk Greats”) and Einstürzende Neubauten (“Kollaps”).
Before Nine Inch Nails (“Together”) creepified dance music with their hit “Closer,” Swans released “Time Is Money” as an unexpected hit featuring Michael Gira’s dictatorial commands, abrasive drum machines and grinding electronic noise akin to a factory about to collapse. If you want to set the mood while scaring away the musically fragile, this is the perfect song to top your playlist
2. Xiu Xiu – “Mary Turner Mary Turner” Xiu Xiu (“Ignore Grief”) defies explanation. Off of “Girl with Basket of Fruit,” their sinister odyssey into the darkest corners of the mind, “Mary Turner Mary Turner” is like a nursery rhyme taken from the Necronomicon. The track tells the tragedy of Mary and Hazel Turner, victims of the May 1918 lynchings in Georgia. The details of their murders are too graphic to print here, but Xiu Xiu makes no hesitation in describing the atrocities committed at the hands of fellow humans.
Even aside from the lyrics, however, the band succeeds at evoking a sense of impending doom. Vocalist Jamie Stewart trembles his trademark anxious voice, deepened with some voice modifier to sound like a ghost warning the present about a small town’s shrouded secret.
3. Lingua Ignota – “I WHO BEND THE TALL GRASSES” Avant-garde musician Kristin Hayter (“I WILL BE WITH YOU ALWAYS”) tagged her music under the former Lingua Ignota moniker as “retribution” on Bandcamp. If her odes to Catholic trauma and survivorship necessitate a label, “retribution” summarizes most of it. “Glorious Father, intercede for me/If I cannot hide from you, neither can he,” Hayter sings along a dissonant organ. Hayter’s 2021 masterpiece “SINNER GET READY” weaves a conceptual narrative of a woman casting divine revenge against an abusive lover.
Hayter’s prayer grows intense with antiquated metaphors of golden scythes and “fiery arrows studded with stars,” desperate to the point in which she smites the very recipient of her devotion. The sounds of dangling chains accompany her Gregorian refrain, “Where does your light not shine?” The song appeals to the Appalachian goths spending their Halloween digging out their prized VHS of “Interview With a Vampire.”
4. Ethel Cain – “Ptolemaea” Moving more southern down the Appalachians, Ethel Cain (“Famous Last Words”) deserves a spot for the track every “Daughter of Cain,” as her fans call themselves, anticipates at her concerts. Cain’s 2022 debut “Preacher’s Daughter” swerves from nostalgic pop rock to somber torch songs to “Ptolemaea,” the intense doom metal track named after the ninth circle of heck in Dante’s “Inferno.” Like Hayter, Cain’s album chronicles the intrepid life and cannibalistic death of the runaway daughter of a cult leader.
“Ptolemaea” represents the betrayal of a man Cain meets far away from home. “Even the iron still fears the rot/Hiding from something I cannot stop,” Cain sings. Eventually Cain repeats a echoey bid of “Stop,” like she is singing from an underground dungeon, until she finally unleashes a terrifying screech, the very one she practices once before each concert according to an interview. The track is the jump scare on this list, a reminder of lingering inevitable death.
5. Fleetwood Mac – “Gold Dust Woman” Most of these songs reside in the realm of experimental and ultra-alternative music scenes attracting similar fanbases. Pop legends Fleetwood Mac (“Rumours Live”), however, rarely make Halloween playlists despite resident sorceress Stevie Nicks providing a gothic edge to the band’s folk rock style. Even the album cover of the band’s seminal album “Rumours” depicts Nicks and drummer Mick Fleetwood posing like medieval sprites engaging in a terpsichorean spell. The closer of the album, “Gold Dust Woman,” exits the band’s testament to their manic near-breakup.
The song is potentially a sequel to their hit “Rhiannon,” featuring Nicks chastising a prideful man for thinking he could live through a breakup with the mystical Welsh witch–fans know this man is clearly band member and Nicks’ ex-partner Lindsay Buckingham. “Rumours” resulted in the band’s best recordings, despite how awkward it was in the studio. Nicks and Buckingham seem to temporarily set aside their conflict to howl like dogs, werewolves if you will, at the song’s spooky closure.
Image from Rachel Claire via Pexels
