K
RISTEN LAWRENCE LOVES HALLOWEEN. “DON’T WE ALL?” YOU’RE PROBABLY THINKING, BUT GUARANTEED LAWRENCE HAS A LEG UP ON YOU. SEE, THE CLASSICALLY TRAINED ORGANIST HAS SPENT THE LAST FEW YEARS WRITING AND RECORDING MORE THAN 60 HALLOWEEN CAROLS FOR AN ONGOING SERIES OF ALBUMS BASED NOT JUST ON THE USUAL PREREQUISITE JACK-O’-LANTERNS, TRICK-OR-TREATERS AND MONSTERS, BUT ALSO ON THE SEASON’S ROOTS AS THE CELTIC FESTIVAL SAMHAIN AND ALL HALLOW’S EVE, AS IT WAS KNOWN
IN SCOTLAND DURING THE 16TH CENTURY. FOR HER, IT’S A MUSICAL QUEST TO GET TO THE CORE OF OUR COLLEC- TIVE FASCINATION WITH A NIGHT OF THE YEAR THAT IS SO MUCH MORE THAN MERELY COSTUMES AND CANDY.
“When I was a little girl, it just felt different,” says the bubbly musician, who
splits her time between Utah and California. “As a child, you don’t get to be outside at night too often walking around. I felt something in the night air. My little heart felt so many more dimensions of life. There’s a term called chiaroscuro – it means uses of extreme light and extreme dark in art. Old Spanish baroque paintings are fiercely dark and fiercely light and that contrast is so striking. Here you are on Halloween night, it’s been dark since the early evening, and you see jack-o’- lanterns piercing the darkness. It’s so spectacular and beautiful. ... Of course I love the candy too. I trick-or-treated all the way through high school!” Inspired by artists as diverse as Bach, Canadian folk singer
Loreena McKennitt, Oingo Boingo’s Danny Elfman (composer for The Corpse Bride and Bordello of Blood among many oth- ers), Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish and British chamber music composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, the 34- year-old – who started playing organ as soon as she was “tall enough to reach the pedals” – has released three al- bums of her elegant carols to date. They are 2008’s Arach- nitect EP (featuring songs such as “Blood Waltz” and a spookified version of the traditional “Ghost of John”), a 2009 full-length called A Broom with a View and a com- pilation of radio edits and instrumental versions titled Vam- pire Empire. With sweeping string arrangements, handsome lyrics
and layers of her own graceful voice, Lawrence spins ethereal tales with a balance of macabre elements and kid-friendly whimsy, such as on “Mostly Ghostly” (“I’m mostly a ghost, but I still have my head / I don’t mean to boast, but I’m better than dead”), “Flappy Bat” (“Witches’ stakes – grave mistakes – summon your swooping grace / Might your shape be escape, masked by a devil’s face?”) and the haunting in- strumental “Sleeping Dust (The Death Lullaby)” that
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give her creations an instantly classic, fun-for-all-ages feel. The songs’ combination of piano, xylophone, massive pipe organs and waltzy harpsichords lend a grand timelessness to the otherwise off-kilter minor-chorded mantras, which often include Lawrence’s own unusual backing vocals of buzzing insect noises and choruses of beastly kids. Though she cites books by Lesley Bannatyne (Halloween – An American Hol- iday, An American History) and Jack Santino (The Hallowed Eve: Dimensions of Culture in a Calendar Festival in Northern Ire- land) as inspiration, she also admits to conducting a certain amount of research in the field. “I go bike riding through cemeteries,” she says, with a gig-
gle. “I love it. But, whenever I approach a funeral party, I’m very careful. I practically tiptoe on my bicycle be- cause you want to show respect to these people. But there are other times to prance through the grave- yard. I try to keep those two aspects alive. … Just like in life, there’s a time and a place for every- thing – to be respectful toward people’s funer- als and to go have a picnic on someone’s grave.” Stepping into a market dominated by dol-
lar-bin compilations of cheesy “Monster Mash” covers and campy sound effects, Lawrence wants to grant Halloween – its history every bit as storied and intrigu- ing as Christmas – a well overdue and more sophisticated represen- tation. “[As a child], it felt so fan-
tastical, but when I grew older, I wanted to know why I like this so much” she says. “You want to know things from a
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