Oh Lord, Oh Lord, what have I done?
I’ve fallen in love with a man on the run
Oh Lord, Oh Lord, I’m begging you please
Don’t take that sinner from me
Oh don’t take that sinner from me…

Man, Halloween is replete with all kinds of blood-curdling screams aplenty. But sometimes nothing’s more chilling than a whisper.

We’re not talking a muted admonition or the like. I mean that low, haunted breath that crawls down your neck when you realize you’ve been following something dangerous for a while now. Which is precisely what The Civil Wars delivers with Devil’s Backbone, a Southern Gothic folk prayer that evokes the divine and submits to the profane.

Remember when Johnny Van Zant cried out in self-reproaching agony “Lord help me, I can’t change”? That’s the cul-de-sac at the end of an abandoned country road about which Devil’s Backbone is circling.

Vocalist Joy Williams sets the tone, her voice trembling with confession and lust in a delivery that feels older than sin. But this ain’t a song about demons, murderers, spirits, or monsters. Devil’s Backbone drowns in the kind of love that makes one kneel in church on Sunday and still think about the wrong person’s hands the whole time.

Released in 2013 on their self titled album, “Devil’s Backbone” starts stripped down but explodes into agony. Just a steady rhythm, some spectral guitar, a droning harmonium, punctuations of electric guitar, pounding drums, and the voices of Williams and John Paul White circling each other like angels who’ve fallen so far, they shouldn’t even bother with wings anymore.

The song’s title conjures up its own mythology. The Devil’s Backbone. Maybe it’s a place. Maybe it’s the crooked ridge between heaven and whatever’s left below. The spine of every person who’s ever wanted something they weren’t supposed to have, teetering on the precipice of damnation.

That’s the beauty of this track; it’s haunted without being horror. It’s Southern Gothic with its Sunday dress torn and its lipstick smudged. It’s a confession booth without a priest inside, just a woman whispering her guilt into the void. God has long since left the chat.

And when she sings, “He’s good and he’s bad and he’s all that I’ve got,” that’s the moment it hits you. Satan doesn’t need horns or a pitchfork or promises of material delights to get you to follow him; sometimes just faded jeans, a cocky swagger, and a crooked smile suffices.

So yeah, Devil’s Backbone isn’t your standard Halloween party tune. It reeks of rain on old wood, when the lights are low but not comforting, when the whiskey bottle is half empty and you don’t feel a hint of buzz. Just let the song crawl beside you and settle in your chest like a secret you’ll never tell.

Because some ghosts don’t come from the grave. Some you just carry with you.

Oh Lord, Oh Lord, he’s somewhere between
A hangman’s knot, and three mouths to feed
There wasn’t a wrong or a right he could choose
He did what he had to do
Oh he did what he had to do…