Abbytron’s Top 10 Halloween Albums

We here at hearingade would like to wish you all a Happy Halloween! Being my favorite holiday and all, I’ve already posted a mix about ghosts and a mix about monsters, but there’s always more where that came from. That’s why, for this special day, I’m listing off my 10 favorite Halloween albums that I suggest you all hunt down and buy in time for your evening celebrations.

Sometimes one song just isn’t enough. Every so often, you’ll find an album that is just so packed full of Halloween goodness, you’ve gotta play the whole thing. This couldn’t be more true for the 10 albums I’ve selected. Get ready to be spooked, because these records turn the creep factor up to 11.

1. Jeremy Messersmith — “The Reluctant Graveyard”
This album is a spectacular pop treat for the cheerfully morbid freak in us all. It’s no secret that I am a gigantic Messersmith fan (that’s not to say I am gigantic, but that my love for his music is gigantic), and “The Reluctant Graveyard” is in no small part responsible. Yes, his other albums are also magnificent, but they aren’t about dead things. This is the only one that speaks my heart’s language (and, yes, I understand how disturbing that probably sounds).

Listen to: Organ Donor

2. The Alan Parsons Project — “Tales of Mystery and Imagination”
Any Alan Parsons Project album probably has its place in a Halloween playlist, but this one especially. “Tales of Mystery and Imagination” is a collection of songs based on the literary work of Edgar Allen Poe, a man who may as well be the holiday’s mascot. With musical renditions of “The Raven” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the album even includes a saga of five songs dedicated to “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Not gonna lie, it’s pretty amazing.

Listen to: The Tell-Tale Heart

October (Bonus) Mix: Scary Monsters And Nice Frights

Hot damn, do I love me some monsters! If I thought I had a lot of ghost-themed songs, imagine my surprise to discover I have almost twice as many monster-themed songs. Holycrapfingers! But I really wanted to make you another super sweet mix for the upcoming Halloween holiday, because one just didn’t seem like enough, so I gathered all the monster songs I had and pared them down to an easy-to-handle 15-song collection ranging from your run-of-the-mill werewolves to the exotic science-project-gone-wrong, and even some humans who are responsible for our favorite fictional creatures.

Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites – Skrillex

Attack of the 60 FT Lesbian Octopus – Does It Offend You Yeah?

Dracula’s Wedding – Outkast

Cannibal – Ke$ha

Devils – Say Hi

George Romero – Sprites

Blue Sunny Day – Jonathan Coulton

Witches Dream – Mason Jennings

Astaroth – Black Francis

The Thing That Only Eats Hippies – Dead Milkmen

The Howling – Hobosexual

Old Moon Madness – Thin Lizzy

Youngest Frankenstein – Ferraby Lionheart

Conversation 16 – The National

Lon Chaney – Vetiver

October Mix: ‘Haunting’ Songs For Halloween

There are all kinds of creeps and spooks to get excited for during Halloween-time (which is basically all of October, and if you don’t agree with that, then you and I will clearly never see eye-to-eye on anything). My favorite, however, are simple ghosts.

I’ve always been excited by the thought of haunted places and objects. Growing up, I used to make up ghost stories to tell my friends on the playground and at Girl Scout camp. They were so convincing, even I believed them. I watched haunted house specials on television and hoped to someday sleep in Lizzie Borden’s house which had since become a haunted bed and breakfast. Fairly often, I even dream about ghosts.

There’s just this thing about ghosts that’s so intriguing, in the same way that the Bermuda Triangle is intriguing, or that even an antique object is intriguing: It symbolizes something that exists outside of ourselves that we can never fully know, be it the past, an unsolved mystery and/or a life forgotten. These are things that make us feel curious and humble and even a little excited.

Vampires, zombies, werewolves and the like are frightening because they make you fear for your life. But ghosts incite a different type of fear: A fear of the unknown and of the entirely possible. A ghost isn’t likely to hurt you but that won’t stop it from terrorizing the shit out of you until it scares you away.

As Scooby Doo and his sexy friends learned, usually what you think is a ghost can be totally explained away by real world logic. “Oh hey, it was just Old Man McGregor chasing us around in a sheet,” Velma might say, “SILLY US,” as they all share a laugh, make a really obvious pun, and head out for bongs and burgers.

“It’s just the wind,” you might realize if you hear a ghostly sound or feel something breeze past you. If the lights flicker, you need a new bulb. If the house creaks, it’s just settling. If you see a strange figure in a photograph, it’s just an illusion caused by lighting or smoke or Photoshop. There’s almost always SOME explanation. THIS DICK tried to ruin some of my favorite Disneyland ghost videos:

WHAT A DICK.

‘Creep On Creepin’ On’ is ghoulishly good, duh

He gazes out from dark eyes buried within sunken, shaded sockets, his translucent flesh turned white by moonlight. Emerging from the viscous water of the bayou, he’s draped in coarse gray rags, wearing accessories of alligators’ teeth and nothing but swamp grime in his hair. The skeletal man is no man at all, but a ghost tormented in the Louisiana wetlands. A bony finger wrapped rigidly over his collar, he moans “All I need is some sunshine/ All I nee-ee-ee-ee-ee-eeed …” before vanishing back beneath the shimmering surface at the hand of his voodoo queen.

If you’ve never seen a picture of Taylor Kirk, then this is the Taylor Kirk you know. The lead singer of folk trio Timber Timbre actually looks more like a clean-cut kid from the country but we all know that at the heart of this Canadian crooner lies a southern spectre beat down with the blues.

He didn’t begin that way, but his lyrics hint he’s always been headed there. In “Cedar Shakes,” Timber Timbre’s first album, he was a country boy in a cabin, haunted, halfway between here and the netherworld. The sounds of spooks in the air loomed over guitar plucks and harmonica as though something from beyond could sense his morbidity. Those spirits began to possess his soul on the follow-up, “Medicinals,” and swept him away to the swamp by the time the band’s self-titled third album emerged. Now, on “Creep On Creepin’ On,” he’s settled into his fate, a soul forever cursed.

Kirk’s gluey voice is thicker than ever, sticking to each word from start to finish. The album’s three instrumental tracks fit well among the rest, but it’s the songs where Kirk broods over piano, guitar, horns and bass that make Timber Timbre so hard to resist. Every Timber Timbre song with vocals is the best Timber Timbre song ever.

The band’s musical style is cinematic. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if “Creep on Creepin’ On” worked as a “Dark Side of the Rainbow” situation with an old silent film like “Nosferatu.” As October looms ahead, there’s really no better time to queue up this record. The background shrieks and howls in “Too Old to Die Young,” not to mention the haunted imagery of “Bad Ritual,” make it ideal for Halloween time.

But we all know what this is really about. While Kirk rattles chains down a dark hallway, shrouded in a sheet and moaning, all you have to do is switch on the lights to reveal he’s just another sentimental man looking for love. Hiding behind the corpse of Buddy Holly, he pleads, “Please break this spell you have me under,”  on “Lonesome Hunter.” He resurrects some old doo-wop enchantments for “Woman,” where he asks plainly, “Why aren’t you moving with me yet?”

Withering under a voodoo spell or not, Kirk’s still got a lot going for him. He may have to bargain with women, “For a moment, can I just pretend you’re mine?” as in the bluesy penultimate track “Do I Have Power,” but he doesn’t have to make any bargains at all to make his records sell. They sell themselves. You should know. You’re about to buy one. And I didn’t even have to use magic.