Ah the waltz, the danse macabre, our brief flirtation with mortality. What Pink Floyd called a short warm moment that remains surrounded by a long cold rest.

Listen, this ain’t called Buttkickin Arbor Day Songs…

If you see life as an expressive dance, then the spartan waltz of Thom Yorke’s Suspirium evokes that existential moment where the pace slows, the tone gets solemn, and joyous expression inverts into quiet contemplation of our limited lifespan.

Written and recorded for the extremely ill-advised 2018 remake of the classic Argento horror film Suspiria, Suspirium couldn’t be more Halloween if set up a Spirit store in the average North American cranial crawlspace.

With its lilting 3/4 time, sparse piano lines, delicate flute work from Pasha Mansurov, the song inundates the listener with haunting reverb and dreamlike textures as Yorke ruminates on the foundations of mortality. All with Yorke’s minor-key vocals drifting in and out of the ambiance like a fog that never seems to break, always seeping back in as it appears to drift away.

At just over three minutes in length, Suspirium is a brief sojourn, but a chilling one. A strangely enough, an oddly uplifting one as well. It’s a quick but potent deep dive into the human condition, folks. We reflect on our brief moments before the eternal cold, but while we’re on this side of the wall?

We dance.

And also: stop remaking classic horror movies.

When the old songs and laughter we do
Are forgiven always and never been true
When I arrive, will you come and find me?
Or in a crowd, be one of them?