It’s Halloween Weekend and Duran Duran are getting in the spooky spirit with Danse Macabre, a new album centered around the dark arts and was inspired by a Halloween show they did last year in Las Vegas.
“We had decided to seize the moment to create a unique, special event…the temptation of using glorious gothic visuals set to a dark soundtrack of horror and humor was simply irresistible,” says keyboardist Nick Rhodes. “That evening inspired us to explore further and to make an album, using Halloween as the key theme. The record metamorphosed through a pure, organic process, and not only was it made faster than anything since our debut album, it has also resulted in something none of us could have ever predicted. Emotion, mood, style and attitude have always been at the heart of Duran Duran’s DNA, we search for light in the darkness and darkness in the light, and I feel we have somehow managed to capture the essence of all of that in this project. Danse Macabre is about the madness of that time of year. Anything goes. With the horrors we’re surrounded by, it’s quite difficult to think of escaping life and having a bit of fun, but we need to. The song is meant to be uplifting. It’s a dark mood of chaos that makes you smile.”
Danse Macabre features a mix of new songs, reworks of thematically appropriate songs from the DD catalog (like early single “Night Boat”) and some appropriate covers. Those include Siouxsie & The Banshees‘ goth classic “Spellbound,” Talking Heads‘ “Psycho Killer’ (a duet with Victoria De Angelis of Måneskin), The Specials‘ “Ghost Town,” Cerrone‘s “Supernature,” Billie Eilish‘s “Bury a Friend,” and The Rolling Stones‘ “Paint it Black.”
The covers are pretty good and Duran Duran manage to put their spin on them without losing the original in the process, and you can tell they were having fun making this one. Listen to the whole things below.
