Graveyard Club Share New Single 'Halloween'

Graveyard Club is excited to share the brand new song "Halloween" from their new album Moonflower, due out June 17th and available for pre-order now here. The single's release is paired with a captivating and cinematic music video for the track that follows a protagonist haunted by the ghost of a past relationship.

Following on the heels of first single, "Nowhere," "Halloween" expands on Graveyard Club's signature dark retro sound, which has been praised by The New York Times for its melding of "moody synth rock" and "brooding, yearning electro-goth". Over chiming synths and haunting guitar loops, "Halloween" and its accompanying video capture the lingering feeling of wistful nostalgia that can be triggered by physical relics or important locations from memories past.

"It's kind of amazing that Graveyard Club went this long without naming a song 'Halloween'." says Matthew Shufman. "A lot of the words to this were inspired by the 'Heaven's Gate' cult. My wife Lauren and I got pretty into the HBO documentary during lockdown. Every now and again, people mention to me that my singing reminds them of Bono from U2, and I never really agreed until I listened back to the takes at the end of this song."

Graveyard Club have spent the intervening years since the release of Goodnight Paradise reflecting and reassessing the trajectory of their own personal lives. A reckoning only hastened by the world events that have unfolded since. Schufman has a large hand painted wooden sign purchased at a Minneapolis antiques shop hanging in his dining room, emblazoned with the word "bittersweet", a word he feels fits the record perfectly.

When the sense of optimism and wonder has faded, what's left is the question stated in the lead single "Valens", "where is this going?" There is a specific feeling of immortality that comes with being young, and while some tracks revel in that, others like "Halloween" and "Elegy", a song about stumbling upon the corpse of a neighbor's pet, are about contending with the end of the line.

But Moonflower is far from mired within that sentiment. Like the flora that gives rise to the album's namesake, something beautiful can be found blooming in the darkness. Moonflower longs for space to dream, plan, and ponder what to do with this one life.

"When I was younger," shares Schufman, "my friends would all talk about how they couldn't wait to grow up and I always felt the opposite - I wanted to stay young and just spend time daydreaming, imagining, and getting lost." Songs like "Nowhere", "Spellsong", and "Rose Vine" are packed with nervous butterflies.

"Spirit Boy", "is a love song written to my childhood self," shares Schufman, "just trying to remember all the ways I was once a wild being filled with endless imagination and enthusiasm for life." Those feelings are hard to hang on to as you grow older - the wonder, the innocence, and the appreciation for this strange place. But in their music's most sublime moments, Graveyard Club are able to channel them through sound and voice to chilling effect.

Graveyard Club are Matthew Schufman (vocals, synths), Michael Wojtalewicz (guitar), Cory Jacobs (drums) and Amanda Zimmerman (bass, vocals). The band began over a shared love of 50's crooners, sci-fi novels, John Hughes films, and 80's pop music.

Watch the new music video here:

To post a comment, you must register and login.