Don’t defrost Mariah Carey just yet, guys! Duran Duran have sidestepped the cliché of the Christmas album and returned with a differently themed collection that could catch on. Danse Macabre is a Halloween album, so instead of sleigh bells and children’s choirs we have spectral keyboards, glowering basslines and a tracklist of cover versions that sounds like it was great ghoulish fun to compile.
Admittedly they’re not the first band you probably think of at this time of year, but as they open their sixteenth album by covering themselves and their 1981 track Night Boat, it’s clear that they’ve been capable of summoning a black mood since the beginning of their long career. They conceived this idea after a fancy dress gig in Las Vegas on October 31 last year, which gave them a chance to apply electrodes and reanimate less familiar oldies such as the 1983 B-side Secret Oktober and the heavy bass groove of 1993’s Love Voodoo (with these Mr Hyde versions renamed Secret Oktober 31st and Love Voudou).
Although keyboardist Nick Rhodes has said they finished it faster than anything since their debut album, this is no novelty rush job. A creepy album sleeve featuring a photograph of a real 1940s séance that Rhodes bought at auction, and a complimentary ouija board with the vinyl edition, show they’ve put the work in, which extends to digging deeper to bodysnatch their cover versions. No sign of anybody doing the Monster Mash here. That means Victoria De Angelis of Måneskin dropping in to give a new bassline to Psycho Killer by Talking Heads, and the band jumping from their own Lonely in the Night to Rick James’s Super Freak within the same song.
It's hard to know what possessed them to turn Billie Eilish’s Bury a Friend into a theatrical monstrosity that loses all of her dead-eyed teenage weirdness. Equally, the title track, an original, starts with a chilling synth line but only really terrifies once Simon Le Bon starts rapping. He’s got “nuns in the bed”, “toasting the bread” and then moves on to what sounds like a “kamikaze stag do”. Mortifying.
Ghost Town by The Specials had such a unique sound in its original version that this one can’t help but sound a bit off, but The Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black sounds reasonable with a few modernising electronic touches. Another original, Black Moonlight, has Nile Rodgers on guitar and a disco party feel. On balance, more treat than trick.
