Staff Pix 10/19

The Milk Crate staff’s favorite tracks of the week, presented with blurbs worthy of a promotional sticker on a jewel case. Tune in Tuesdays from 1-2 EST to the Staff Pix radio show.

Will Ingman

Bella Lugosi’s Dead by Bauhaus

Rock critic Alexis Petridis said it best in a listicle for The Guardian: On August 6th, 1979, Bauhaus invented goth. One year before the inimitable Siouxsie Sioux would shift her band straight into black-eyeliner territory, English post-punks Bauhaus would accidentally-on-purpose invent gothic rock with their nine-minute discordant eulogy for Hungarian horror icon Bela Lugosi. Recorded during the band’s first-ever studio session, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” would set the standard for future gothic rock in both sound and appearance.

Sara O’Connell

Helena by Misfits 

The undisputed kings of Halloween, this track details the lengths that Michale Graves would go to show how much he loves his partner. Inspired by the 1993 mystery thriller-horror, Boxing Helena, where an obsessive doctor cuts the limbs off the woman he’s in love with. While the movie itself isn’t very good, this song is! The song is structured in a way that tells a complex story with emotion and a heavy sound. This is a spooky track to get in touch with your inner ghoul.

Karenna Umscheid

Crystal by Stevie Nicks

From the seminal witchy classic that is Practical Magic, Stevie Nicks’ sweet ballad is a Halloween song for the more spiritual. She sings of a divine connection, magic in an ageless love, the safety and fear in flooding. It’s perfect for cuffing season, a track to walk through the Boston Common to as the leaves fall. Halloween isn’t always zany and scary, it can also be a time of solace for those who veer outside the mainstream. Crystal is a lullaby for the witches, a shot of comfort for the innate devilish natures that emerge in October.

Nia Tucker

Jennifer’s Body by Hole 

A story of a dismembering and kidnapping, Courtney Love wrote this song allegedly in the bar after finding out that Kurt Cobain was cheating on her. What results is a track that is as hasty and distressed as you can imagine Courtney would be in the moment, and a haunting comparison to a woman discarded by someone she loved.

Kyle Woolery

Freak Like Me by Sugababes

“Freak Like Me,” the debut single from the second Sugababes lineup, is an unlikely yet totally fitting mashup of Adina Howard’s smooth, sultry R&B classic “Freak Like Me” and Gary Numan’s synthpop opus “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” Lyrically, the song speaks about being a “freak” in a sexual sense, but the dark, throbbing production evokes imagery of a more sinister kind of freak—a sentiment that is also echoed by the music video, where the Sugababes portray vampires warding off sleazy men in a seedy nightclub with their supernatural powers. An anthem for all the freaks (regardless of how to choose to interpret that word in the context of the song), “Freak Like Me” is the perfect addition to any Halloween party playlist. This is, after all, the night when all the freaks come out to play.

Izzy Desmarais

Sally’s Song by Danny Elfman, performed by Catherine O’Hara 

I recently watched The Nightmare Before Christmas episode of The Movies That Made Us, a Netflix series that details the process of making popular movies everyone knows and loves. Prior to watching this, I was pretty indifferent to The Nightmare Before Christmas. It wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t the greatest movie I’ve ever seen. This episode absolutely changed how I think of this movie. After learning about the heart and soul everybody put in this project, specifically director Henry Selick, composer Danny Elfman, and writer Caroline Thompson, it’s impossible not to love this movie. Elfman put so much of himself into the character Jack, making him an incredibly dynamic protagonist who is at a difficult crossroads in his life. Without Thompson, there would be no Sally, who is the driving force behind Jack’s emotional self discovery, hence why I am making my pick “Sally’s Song” specifically. Anyways, Tim Burton sucks, and I love the absolute passion everybody had for this film despite how terribly Burton treated them.

Diogo Fernandes Tavares

New Guns by vamp leek

This Florida rapper is calling out the vamps. Everyday in rap’s underground scene is a Halloween party paying homage and paving the way for Rock music. 

Maura Cowan

It’s Almost Halloween by Jon Walker

May the former scene kids and the eternally emo at heart rejoice. Former Panic! At The Disco bassist Jon Walker offers a fresh spin on the cult classic band’s even cultier classic track, “It’s Almost Halloween.” The original 2008 song and its charmingly low-budget music video was a campy, upbeat tribute to the season, but Walker’s rendition is a darker, more stripped-back take. When it was a young and gawky Brendon Urie commanding us to scream, the inclination was perhaps simply to scoff as we “did the trick-or-treat” (whatever that means). There is something ominous in Walker’s tone, though, that gives the distinct impression that the monsters he dances with are all too real.

Sarah Fournell

Ghostbusters - Ray Parker Jr

Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr. is the quintessential Halloween track. It is a year-round favorite of mine, full of jazzy, spooky, synth pop goodness. In addition, this Academy Award nominated track has one of the best music videos of all time, full of 80’s cheesiness and out of pocket cameos. In terms of film in general, no theme song goes as hard as “Ghostbusters” does.

Andrew Johnson

The End by The Doors

The end is a 12 minute epic by the doors, which has a truly haunting feel to it. Like most doors song it tells a complex story full of metaphors and lines that stick in your head for weeks. While not strictly a Halloween song it does have the same feeling as Halloween.

Harry Bates

“Witchy Woman” by the Eagles (2013 Remastered)

I don’t think there’s a better song to encapsulate the feeling of Halloween than this classic by the Eagles -- sorry fellow Milk Crate staff. “Witchy Woman” is where banging chords meet groovy vocals to make a sound that is impossible not to get down to. It has this erie feeling that sends me northbound to Salem via South Station. It’s slamming, and that vocal riff at 2:36 will send you into a haze of fog and witches’ brew. It put a spell on me!

Lily Hartenstein

Ghost Town by the Specials 

British ska group The Specials was on the brink of dissolving when they recorded the distinctly creepy dub track “Ghost Town”, and broke up shortly afterwards (until compiling their protest songs album in 2020), despite “Ghost Town” winning several major accolades for its social commentary. Addressing urban decay and violence in UK cities, the song is rife with the uneasy tension of its creation, layered with sirens and ribbonned with a villainous humor. The flute, horns, and shrieking background vocals combine to create a track that is simultaneously dark and upbeat: perfect for Halloween.

Kate Mettetal

Venus in Furs by the Velvet Underground & Nico

Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground are prolific within the realms of art and music for a number of things. But, chief among these is the band’s ability to teeter the fine line between the absurdity of innermost human desires and the tastefully acceptable. Venus in Furs, initially released on their trailblazing self-entitled debut album in 1969, cuts directly to the core of the behavioral and psychological extremes that were integral to Lou Reed’s song writing style. The bare-bones instrumentals of a screeching, distorted fiddle provides an painfully-ideal backdrop for Reed’s looming, deadpan vocals, which belt out praises for sadomasochistic practices drawn directly from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s chilling, 1870s novel Venus in Furs.