{"id":14897,"date":"2025-10-03T17:30:27","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T21:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/millheiser.com\/hokeyblog\/?p=14897"},"modified":"2025-10-03T17:39:29","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T21:39:29","slug":"buttkickin-halloween-songs-suspirium-thom-yorke-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/millheiser.com\/hokeyblog\/2025\/10\/03\/buttkickin-halloween-songs-suspirium-thom-yorke-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Buttkickin’ Halloween Songs: “Suspirium” — Thom Yorke (2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This is a waltz thinking about our bodies
What they mean for our salvation
The little clothes that we stand up in
Just the ground on which we stand

Is the darkness ours to take?
Bathed in lightness, bathed in heat
All is well, as long as we keep spinning<\/em>
Here and now, death still behind a wall…<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listen, this ain’t called Buttkickin Arbor Day<\/em> Songs…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At just over three minutes in length, Suspirium<\/strong> 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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We dance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And also: stop remaking classic horror movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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