Duran Duran’s Halloween themed album DANSE MACABRE is out now, and is the perfect soundtrack to your spooky season.
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Translated to “Dance of Death,” DANDSE MACABRE is Duran Duran’s sixteenth studio album, inspired by a Halloween concert the band played last year. The album is a “new wave meets gothic” compilation, with each song featuring wiry synthesizers and Simon Le Bon's filtered voice over an echoing dance beat. And as for the songs themselves, the album features three new originals, three re-workings of classic Duran Duran songs, and a few covers. From the likes of Billie Eilish, The Rolling Stones and Talking Heads, each cover isn’t a replica of the original by any means. Rather, they are each akin to a reworked, and reimagined, version of the song. “We’d done some of the cover versions in our live show in Las Vegas,” frontman Le Bon told Rolling Stone in an interview. “And I think that was what was the trigger for the whole [album] idea.”
Take “SUPER LONELY FREAK” for example, which is a blend of the band’s “Lonely in Your Nightmare” from album Rio with a cover of “Super Freak” by Rick James. The two were merged with their similar basslines in mind, which Le Bon had said was something the band had, “messed around with for many, many years before we actually did it.” The fun that Duran Duran has with experimentation and spookiness was the entire intention behind creating DANSE MACABRE - and it clearly comes through.
As the fourth track of the album, “BURY A FRIEND” reaches its full creepy potential with Duran Duran. The song was shifted to an instrumental focus, with the vocal line covered in filters within the mixes foreground. This gives an extra “ghostly” feeling to the song, which already has lyrics like “honestly, I thought that I would be dead by now” and “Bury a friend, I wanna end me.” Le Bon even revealed that the band changed the tonality, or key, of the song itself to add yet another layer of dissonance and mystery. And of course, the band would be remiss if they didn’t add The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” to the album. This version features a synthesized organ against classic rock guitar and drums, and even some pre-approved lyric variations. Repeatedly throughout the verses, the band seems to jump from "new wave goth" to classic rock, as if paying homage and then re-establishing the song as their own.
Perhaps the best cover of the album, however, is Duran Duran’s take on “Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads. The song leans toward their new wave sound by utilizing a funky dance beat throughout. The focus on the drums' high-hat cymbal and rhythmic guitar almost forgo any Halloween eeriness, that is, until the filtered voice comes in. This time, however, the song is mixed as if the voice is a phantom, swaying from left to right ear, front to back. Le Bon truly shows off his range in technique, with the verses a kind of sing speak melting into an almost operatic French bridge.
Yet the most notable feature goes to Victoria De Angelis, a band member of Måneskin, on bass and background vocals. “When ‘Psycho Killer’ made the cut for the album, I thought, ‘I’m gonna ask her if she’d like to have a bass-off!’” bassist John Taylor said, calling the instrumentalist, “probably the most important electric bassist out there right now.” He was more than happy to sit the song out for De Angelis to play instead. “It was insane being asked by one of the greatest bass players ever to play one of my favorite songs with Duran Duran,” she said in a statement. “It was so much fun recording together with John and he was so sweet to me and encouraged me to express myself and play it my own way. I’ll always remember that day.”
Duran Duran’s full album DANSE MACABRE is out now, available in stores, streaming, and our Duran Duran Radio with the Audacy App. Have a scary fun holiday!