It’s upon us again. That holiday. The one with all the candy, shrieking children, and unchecked bloodlust. No, not Christmas… Halloween.
Hiphop, industrial, polka… you can make an argument for all of those as the scariest genre. But country and roots music take the prize. C’mon, we’re talking about a realm where it is commonly accepted knowledge that blues pioneer Robert Johnson sold his soul to Satan.
My favorite scary country tune is Johnny Paycheck‘s “The Cave,” which Don Slack likes to spin from time to time on his Thursday night KEXP program, “Swingin’ Doors.” Despite being a chilling post-nuclear-holocaust tale, this track reached number 32 on the country charts in 1967. In fact, much of Paycheck’s repertoire from the second half of the ’60s is pretty bloodcurdling; pick up the 1996 anthology, The Real Mr. Heartache: The Little Darlin’ Years, and, along with “The Cave,” you’ll find songs about landing in the booby hatch (“(Like Me) You’ll Recover in Time”) and the self-explanatory “(Pardon Me) I’ve Got Someone to Kill.”
But the most consistently spooky big-name Nashville artist was Johnny Cash. Look at his repertoire: “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” “Dark as a Dungeon,” and the death-row narrative “25 Minutes to Go.” But for neophytes, delving into Cash’s enormous catalog can be a fear-inducing undertaking. Where to begin? Try starting with the brand-new The Legend of Johnny Cash, a 21-track comp released in conjunction with the forthcoming biopic Walk the Line, and the first anthology to span everything from his mid-’50s early Sun singles to his creepy Nine Inch Nails cover, “Hurt.” Best of all, it includes his version of “Delia’s Gone,” which became an MTV hit in 1994 via a clip in which the Man in Black murders Kate Moss.
I don’t know which is scarier: cabaret shows or organized religion. Our Lady of the Broken Spine, the latest album from Boston sextet Reverend Glasseye, incorporates elements of both, but the end result is haunting, in the good way. “17 Lashes” features organ drones in the style of a Hammer horror film, ghostly backing vocals swoop through “Mother is a Carpegian,” and “God Help You Dumb Boy” pits the evangelical fervor of singer Adam Glasseye up against mariachi brass and an accusatory Greek chorus. If you dig the eerier moments of Wall of Voodoo (either incarnation) or 16 Horsepower, don’t miss this ensemble at the Sunset this Thursday, October 27.
Inventors are a creepy lot, too. Look how poorly things turned out for that inquisitive scientist in The Fly. When Tom Waits wondered “What’s He Building?” on 1999’s Mule Variations, he might have been snooping on singer-songwriter Thomas Truax. This New York oddball specializes in bizarre music-making contraptions; on the cover of his new CD, Audio Addiction, he models the Backbeater, a drum machine jerry-rigged from bicycle parts and kitchen debris. Catch Truax’s creations in action Saturday, October 29 at the Jules Maes Saloon, which also features the Bad Things, Bar Tabac, Emerald City eccentric Baby Gramps, and others.
