Duran Duran’s New Horror-Themed Album “Danse Macabre” Is Here in Time for Halloween
And it wants you to danse, all right.
Following their recent tour, Duran Duran has released their latest album just in time for America’s answer to Guy Fawkes Day (or Walpurgis Night; take your pick.) Danse Macabre is out now on digital, vinyl, CD, and cassette.
The title track and video were released several weeks ago, followed by the track “Black Moonlight.” These teasers, which are both original songs, didn’t give this old Duran fan a lot of hope for the rest of the album.
Though the “Danse Macabre” video is cool enough, the song has absolutely nothing in common with the classical music piece of the same name composed by Camille Saint-Saens. Maybe I shouldn’t have expected it to, but I was disappointed nonetheless.
The title track features too much chanting — as opposed to singing — from Simon Le Bon (who turned 65 on release day), though it’s spiced up with some nice backing vocals and that hell of a video.
In case you missed it:
The second pre-release song that was released, “Black Moonlight,” sounds typical of old-style Duran, but is lacking greatness.
The album features several covers, most of which, along with the new original songs, have some connection to horror, mystery, or death.
Among the covers are a danceable version of Billie Eilish’s “Bury a Friend,” and a cover of Siouxie and the Banshees’ “Spellbound” that sounds as much like it belongs to the 80s as it did in the 80s.
Other covers include Cerrone’s “Supernature,” The Rolling Stones’ “Paint it Black,” and The Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer.” All of them sound a lot like the originals. “Bury a Friend” is really the only cover that has a unique Duran spin on it.
The band covers itself twice on the album. The first track on it is “Nightboat,” the song with the “horror” video from Duran Duran’s 1981 self-titled debut album. The new version is — in a word — slow. I prefer the original.
Remember this?
But the strangest cover is a mashup of the band’s own “Lonely in Your Nightmare” from the Rio album, and Rick James’ “Super Freak.” It’s called “Super Lonely Freak” (of course it is.) I’m not sure how these two songs go together, or what either of them has to do with the Halloween theme. But I love “Lonely in Your Nightmare” so this was pretty cool to hear.
Here they are doing it live this past summer.
Sadly for me, none of the new songs on Danse Macabre thrill me. I was excited, for a few seconds, about the final song on the album, “Confessions in the Afterlife.” But that’s only because the opening of the song reminds me a lot of “Missing” — a track from Duran Duran’s 80s side project, Arcadia, on their So Red the Rose album. In addition to Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and Roger Taylor were also in the one-album-only Arcadia.
Danse Macabre is a curious project, but it would work great at Halloween parties.
What’s that? You’re not familiar with Camille Saint-Saen’s 1875 hit Danse Macabre? Oh, I bet you are, you just didn’t know the name of it.
