What I’m listening to the week of October 28, 2024. Yeah, it’s the Halloween edition. Listen along on Spotify.

1. Things That Scare Me – Neko Case

The hammer clicks in place
The world’s gonna pay
Right down in the face of God and his saints
Claim your soul’s not for sale
I’m a dying breed who still believes
Haunted by American dreams

Neko Case remains unimpeachable. Something about walking around my neighborhood and listening to this song while seeing presidential candidate lawn signs flanked by Halloween decorations made it really click for me.

2. Noid – Tyler, The Creator

Someone’s keeping watch
I feel it on my shoulder

Tyler revisits horrorcore, but this time he’s the protagonist of the horror movie, not the monster, as he dodges cameras, gunshots, cameras, invasive fans, hackers, and hateful neighbors. Police sirens and other background folley add to the song’s tense atmosphere, while the Ngozi Family sample keeps things energetic.

3. Puff (Up in Smoke) – Kenny Lynch

What made you act so strange, was it that magic show?
Why did you disappear, where did you really go?
Perhaps a crystal ball will help me understand
Or was it witchcraft, baby, or a sleight of hand?

Lynch was one of the few black singers in the British 60s pop scene, and famously joined The Beatles on their first British tour. This song could be written off as a novelty, but Lynch’s sincere vocals and the swelling strings give it a beating heart.

4. Down From Dover – Spell

The sun behind a cloud just casts the crawling shadow
Over the fields of clover

In 1993, Scottish legend Rose McDowall (of Strawberry Switchblade fame) and Boyd Rice (experimental musician, real actual priest in the Church of Satan, and founder of a self-described “occult-fascist” think tank) collaborated on an album of 1960s covers. The results were great, especially this one, which breathes spooky new life into a lesser-known Dolly Party track.¹ Knowing more about Rice’s background, it’s hard not to read a sinister undertone into his lines, but he’s perfectly paired here next to McDowall’s clear and girlish vocals.

5. Excitable Boy – Warren Zevon

Well, he’s just an excitable boy

“Werewolves of London” gets all the love, but I think this is the superior Halloween song from this album. I guess that the subject matter makes it a little less “fun spooky”, but it’s clearly intended to be comedically over the top, all dressed up with a sax solo and cheerful backup singers.² I think the way the titular excitable boy’s genuinely disturbed behavior is brushed aside in a “boys will be boys” fashion has aged very well.

6. Better At Love – The Exbats

Why must I always fight like a dog?
Why can’t I be better at love?

The Exbats, a charming father-daughter band from New Zealand, are no strangers to Halloween music. This song doesn’t have a single spooky lyric in it³, but it utilizes a guitar riff that makes it indistinguishable from a Monster Mash b-side. And it rules.

7. Tymps (The Sick in the Head Song) – Fiona Apple

So why did I kiss him so hard late last Friday night?
And keep on letting him change all my plans
I’m either so sick in the head, I need to be bled dry to quit
Or I just really used to love him, I sure hope that’s it

This song is creepy, right? It’s not just me? Yet another example of how a song doesn’t necessarily need frightening subject matter (although going back to a toxic ex is nightmarish in its own sort of way) to achieve true eeriness. I like the repetition in the final chorus of “or I just really used to love him”, each one sounding more genuine and definite than the last, as if Apple is coming to terms with the truth in real time.

8. I Put A Spell on You (Original Version) – Screamin’ Jay Hawkins

I don’t care if you don’t want me
I’m yours right now

This original recording of the Halloween classic strips away some of the persona and allows the piano and the tortured intensity of the lyrics to come through. It’s no doubt the Screamin’ version made the song the hit it is today, but it’s interesting to put the two in contrast, especially with so many artists taking on “serious” covers of the song.⁴

9. The Future – Leonard Cohen

I’m seen the future, brother
It is murder

Is there anything scarier than the future? Cohen’s soothsaying takes on a troublingly conservative bent, but the ghoulish imagery (a lonely world with “no one left to torture” and “nothing left to measure anymore”, women hung upside down, wrecked private lives, phantoms, fires on the road) resonates with me more every passing year. And the organ makes it appropriately spooky for October.

10. Cemetery – Unknown Artist

Late late nights all filled with fog
Eye for an eye and dog eat dog
Nice cool tombstones can make you quiver all alone

“Cemetery” comes with a built-in spooky backstory: as the legend goes, Numero Group found this song in an old collection of tapes and has been unable to track down the original artist. Whoever they are, they’re undoubtedly a genius for producing this 10-minute epic about a princess being dared to enter a cemetery where the ghoul Maniac Murgatroyd Beauregard is said to reside. The song features a creepy voice-over, stories set in two different decades, spellbinding female soul vocals, and an incredible guitar solo. Truly the definition of a hidden gem.⁵

1. Not really sure why they changed “Dover” to “Denver” in this version, it kind of messes up some key rhymes. ↩︎
2. Provided by Jennifer Warnes and Linda Ronstadt! ↩︎
3. I guess “I want a word, a word with your ghost” is kind of spooky, but I wouldn’t even notice it if the song didn’t sound like it was made for skeletons to dance to. ↩︎
4. Sidenote: The Wikipedia article for I Put A Spell on You is one of my favorite Wikipedia articles. ↩︎
5. Useless personal connection: Because I played GTA V for the first time during the October this song was released, I always picture it happening in that cemetery where Trevor and Michael have their late game confrontation. ↩︎

Article cover photo courtesy of the SMDR Photographic Negatives Collection.