Tags
All Hallows Eve, Big Stir Records, Bloodshot Bill, Crater Creek, Halloween, Holiday music, I. Jeziak and The Surfers, Justin Kerecz, Librarians with Hickeys, Splitsville, The Gold Needles, The Incurables, The Origin, The Surfragettes, Vista Blue
Throughout the year I try to set aside seasonal songs for a range of holidays and I have to say the quality and quantity of Halloween fare has been steadily improving. Here’s a spate of fright night singles and a top rank compilation album dedicated to chilling, thrilling and haunting your playlist. Candy not included.
Justin Kerecz says he’s living in “Devil Town.” The song kicks off with a mournful tone, almost Springsteen-esque. But things pick up halfway through, adding drama and depth. Toronto’s The Suffragettes rewrite a classic classical-music instrumental as “Satan’s Holiday,” leaning heavily on surf guitar. And they don’t spare the tremelo. It’s corpse cool for sure. Bloodshot Bill takes us back to a 1950s rockabilly monster rock with “Meet the Count.” Goofy but offset with deadly hip lead guitar work. Victoria’s The Origin strike some lighter pop notes on their winsome track “So You Think You Can Necromance.” I love the wordplay! A dip into Crater Creek’s Horror Anthology could expose you to some chilling screamcore. But the two songs featured here are anything but. “Caveman” is 25 seconds of blistering narrative development while “See Through” adds a Beach Boys beach-party campfire feel to a lovelorn ghost’s failure to connect with his human target. And it can’t be Halloween without an appearance from those reliable holiday pop punksters Vista Blue. “I Didn’t Get Invited to the Halloween Party” works on so many levels. It draws from neo-1950s disaster song motifs, elevating and intensifying the elements with a 1990s punky panache. These guys never get old (hm? Are they zombies?).
The major event this Halloween music season comes from Big Stir Records in the form of a compilation album entitled Chilling, Thrilling Hooks and Haunted Harmonies. The record contain 41 tracks, divided between 21 songs by different acts associated with the Big Stir stable of artists and 20 short spoken word/sound affects ‘link’ tracks that give the package a semblance of a thematic show. The album is an obvious homage to the 1964 Disneyland Records release Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House, right down the spoken word/sound effects components and a cover clearly inspired by Paul Wenzel’s distinctive artwork from the original. But it is the music that makes this release so special. Let’s face it, thematic holiday albums can often feel like forced, slapdash affairs. Not this one. The 21 original tunes here are quality power pop, holiday or not. Opening musical cut “Ghoul You Want” from Librarians With Hickeys sets the bar high with its subtle, smooth Zombies elan. This is the hit single, surely. Not that the other 19 songs aren’t worthy of maximum Halloween-radio rotation. Really, this is such a solid collection of songs, though more than I can cover in detail here. Instead I’ll just single out three more tracks that really caught my ear. First up I’d draw attention to Splitsville’s “I Was a Teenage Frankenstein.” Plenty of power in the pop here, melding melody-rich vocals with striking rhythm guitars. Then The Gold Needles crank up some hypnotic lead guitar lines on “Ghost in the Airwaves.” I love hearing the reverby guitars ring. Last on, The Incurables give us a throwback to that 1950s meets seventies garage rock on “Halloween Bride.” The album’s short spoken-word segments performed by The Pepper’s Ghost Players could have descended into cringey cheese but instead evoke the fun over-the-top melodrama of 1960s monster movies. Chilling, Thrilling Hooks and Haunted Harmonies is a fabulous collection, lovingly crafted, expertly executed, and nicely priced. It’s a must-have double-album addition to your vinyl, CD, or digital music crypt.
I do the love the cheese of early 1960s fright night music/entertainment and, as you can see here, that tradition remains alive and well. Click on the links above to stock up on Halloween tunes while letting I. Jeziak and the Surfers guide you musically to the exits with their All Hallows’ Eve instrumental “Mummy Walk.”
Photo courtesy Kristina Alexanderson Flikr collection.
So many would-be hits have ended up in the equivalent of a rock and roll wasteland: the cut-out bargain bin, unheard and/or underappreciated. What if those great tracks could be resurrected in a different time to more appreciative ears? Today’s time capsule top five gathers up a number of strong singles that deserve another crack at the hit parade.
The Dogs were a French punky new wave band, particularly active recording-wise from the late 1970s to late 1980s. Like Elvis Costello, they evolved from pub rock into something harder, taking punk’s influence to sharpen their basic rough-edged rock and roll sound on albums one and two before attempting a more commercial breakthrough on a record number three, Too Much Class for the Neighbourhood. By contrast, their fourth album, 1983’s Legendary Lovers, represented a return to some of their earlier rough edges, ably demonstrated on the fantastic single, “Never Come Back.” This is an uber cool sound – check out the ringing guitars and the heavily French-accented English pronunciation. By all accounts The Dogs were a legendary live band, something that really seems obvious from the evident and palpable excitement oozing from this recording.Never Come Back
The number of bands whose albums got lost in the various record label merger and acquisitions that took place throughout the 1990s would include The Sighs. Originally signed to Charisma/Virgin, their 1992 debut What Goes On failed to excite EMI, the new owners, who let it stall with lacklustre promotion. The band’s second album four years later also failed to take off. And that is shame. Just listen to “Make You Cry” with its jangly opening and incredibly catchy chorus, the latter featuring a stunning harmony vocal. When I first heard the band hit the “he’ll make you cry” line it literally stopped me in my tracks. This should have been a break out hit single.Make You Cry
Even’s “Seconds” is an amazing 1960s-inspired single from their 2001 album A Different High. Well, actually, it wasn’t the official single, but this scribe thinks it should have been. The hypnotic hooky lead line, the super Beatles’ Rubber Soul-era vocals, the overall chimey-ness of the sound – surely this says hit material. Perhaps things could have turned out different for Even, an Australian outfit perennially at the top of the critics’ lists but not the charts, if this had been the official 45 shipped to radio? I know, probably not. But it remains at the top of the Poprock Record charts. Actually, a great deal of Even’s catalogue is in high rotation around here. This tune is just the tip of a great songcraft iceberg. You really can’t go wrong with any of their six albums and three EPs.Seconds
The sibling two-thirds of Greenberry Woods split off to form Splitsville in the late 1990s, eventually releasing five albums between 1997 and 2003. For a band with that much material, they leave a surprisingly light imprint on the ole internet. Influences abound on their music – Teenage Fanclub, Matthew Sweet, as well as all the usual 1960s suspects (e.g. Beatles, Beach Boys, etc.). “I Wish I’d Never Met You” is from their last album, Incorporated, and it is definitely channeling a bittersweet Teenage Fanclub feel both musically and lyrically.I Wish I’d Never Met You
A quick listen of “Waterfall” from San Francisco’s The Fresh and Onlys might have you scratching your head at descriptions of their sound as garage rock. Garage pop maybe. Sure the vocals hover with that distinctly sixties garage rock ambience but the guitars are wonderfully melodic, both the rumbly one that anchors the versus and the more buoyant one that anticipates and rides through the chorus. Aptly named, “Waterfall” it’s a song that rushes over you in a most pleasant way.
Poprock Record 