It may not seem like it, but Duran Duran It has always been there, since 1978, taking occasional breaks, but never separating and serving its followers with periodic new albums. The most recent was ‘Future past’ (2021), and now Simon Le Bon and company come up with a strange artifact, ‘Danse macabre’designed to liven up this festival of pagan origin, converted into a commercial event, which (also here) we know as Halloween.

It is an album that mixes new songs (three) and versions of both other artists and pieces of their past work, all with the thematic link of the alleged dialogue with the afterlife. With a bit of humor and playing with a certain ‘malrollismo’: see that black and white cover, which reproduces the photo of a remote spiritualist scene, which apparently Nick Rhodes (the keyboard player), acquired at auction. We already see that the matter, in short, arouses great interest at the Duran Duran headquarters.

family reunited

The idea came from concert for Halloween that the group offered last year in Las Vegas. Everything has happened quite quickly, and his creativity has given nothing more than to create those three songs that can be heard, even if they did not change the course of planet Earth. The title song, ‘Danse macabre’, stands out, with its airs of sinister ritual. Then, the lustrous funk of ‘Black Moonlight’, with guitars from the (partially) recovered Andy Taylor and of the guru Nile Rodgers (which produced the group’s peak ‘Notorious’, 1986). Yes, this move has served to recover old accomplices and promote certain family reunion effectsince it is also dropped by the disk Warren Cuccurullohead of the group between 1989 and 2001. The third of the new songs, ‘Confession in the afterlife’, closes the tour leaving a soft, abracadabra trail.

This material is interspersed with replays from their past, somewhat tuned for the occasion, like that ‘Nightboat’ that is less synth-pop and more serious than in 1981. And a series of versions of uneven success parade through the tracklist. ‘Spellbound’, by Siouxsie and the Bansheeswins in special effects and loses its original primitivism along the way. ‘Paint it black’, by the Rolling Stones, sounds somewhat parodic, dressed up for the witch’s train. And in the assault on ‘Bury a friend’ hardly anything remains of the suffocating darkness that imprinted Billie Eilish.

The last ‘cover’, ‘Psychkiller’ by Talking Heads, with the beefy bass of Victoria de Angelis (Måneskin), is an excuse to extend the party (the song is not even related to the funeral theme). And what remains, in short, is a trace of a fun album that uses Halloween with a banal spirit similar to that of all those horror comedies with gloomy pumpkins and clowns that threaten you with a sledgehammer. Jordi Bianciotto

Other albums of the week

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