This song deserves to be the “White Christmas” of Halloween songs.
It should play in every department store in the weeks leading up to October 31st, and at every dinner table where pumpkin pie is being served. Families should listen to it while carving jack-o-lanterns and cutting holes in bedsheets in anticipation of a night of trickery and treatery.
The entire album, in fact, seems tailor-made for Halloween. The image on the cover is enough to make you want to scroll down the page quickly, in the same way we all (admit it) run up the stairs a bit faster when we’re home alone at night. The band’s name and aesthetic evokes a creepy Victorian circus with one unmarked tent at the back of the grounds that nobody dares to approach.
This is a band that self-identifies as “haunted chamber music,” and backs it up with music that feels like the soundtrack to Amelie Poulain’s nightmares.
Oh, and if you’re interested in purchasing the album, it retails for…wait for it…$6.66.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. The two principal chords are G-minor and E-flat minor, an interval known as a minor sixth. This is perhaps the creepiest interval of them all, and it appears (in various forms) in the main organ theme from “Phantom of the Opera” and the piano line from the movie “Halloween.”
2. Throughout the song, there’s a quiet mechanic creaking in the background, as if the track is being played on an old hand-cranked record player. A record player that is being hand-cranked by a creepy steam-punk child with blank spaces for eyes.
3. All gimmickry aside, Meredith Yayanos and Dan Cantrell are musicians with a skill level that is almost as scary as the music they produce.
Recommended listening activity:
Staring at yourself in the mirror until you’re convinced your reflection just moved.