Remember mixtapes? Crimson Arts does. Welcome to our biweekly feature, where we create mixtapes for every emotion and every season—for breakups, breakdowns, and breakdancing. This week our mixtape is a two-part feature dedicated to all the creepy crawlies you may encouter this Halloween.
Welcome to part two of our Halloween mixtape spectacular. Whereas we can run from the monsters we met on Pt.1, we often find ourselves unable to escape our inner demons. We have the ability to create our own personal Frankensteins that are scarier than anything we can find jumping out of the grave. Consider staying in this Halloween and taking a listen through this mixtape. Although these ten tracks don’t address the ghosts, vampires, and zombies that will prowl the streets, they are certainly horrifying in their own right. Listen along.
“You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are,” Keaton Henson
It begins with a simple guitar melody, messy harmonics played over a thin whir that sounds like ringing wine glasses. If you’re imagining a handsomely unhandsome man with sad eyes and an inconsolable beard hunched over a guitar in an empty room, you’re not far from the truth. Henson sings, hushed and insistent, “Does his love make your head spin? Does his love make your head spin?”
“Casimir Pulaski Day,” Sufjan Stevens
Casual listeners might grossly misinterpret “Casimir Pulaski Day.” A bouncing guitar riff, a banjo line, and a triumphant brass section accompany Stevens as he recalls that after his love’s death from a terminal illness, her father drove his car into the Navy Yard, just to prove that he was sorry. Stevens quietly describes the moment she dies with the image of a cardinal hitting a window—the banjo plays on.
“virginia,” Julia Brown
“I watched the sun rise in your kitchen,” begins lead singer Sam Ray, skirting the line between pedestrian and intimate. This memory’s poignant specificity turns into “virginia,” a fuzzy, lo-fi waltz that flits back and forth between nostalgia, thoughts of suicide, and the quickly fading memory of a road trip, expertly tied together in a mere five lines.
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