:: Thin White Spooks
Ten creepy cuts from the Vicar's vaults.
1. Atrocity Exhibition - Joy Division
Almost all the Macclesfield misanthropes' output was heavy with an atmosphere to chill the blood. But this track from second album Closer is particularly unsettling. The title alone conjures images you don't really want in your head.
2. All Cats Are Grey - The Cure
Never exactly goths, Robert Smith's gang could always produce the sound of a rain lashed funeral shot in monochrome. not least on this aching, echoey expression of regret.
3. Marian - Sisters of Mercy
Who else but the Sisters could make such a grand job of a song about drowning at sea? Suitably desperate and baritone they even give us the last verse in German.
4. Sense of Doubt - David Bowie
Mired in drugs and the shadow of the Berlin Wall, Bowie not only gave the Heroes album its soaring title track, he also added this industrial instrumental which could be the soundtrack to the best arthouse ghost movie you never saw.
5. Influenza - Gene Loves Jezebel
Unfairly marked as second division goths, GLJ at least created this curious, supernatural, xylophone flecked gem.
6. The Imperial March - John Williams
Darth Vader is arguably the cinema's greatest villian (emails to the usual address) and that's in no small part due to this stomping, threatening signature tune. That and the heavy breathing.
7. Playground Twist - Siouxsie and the Banshees
The ice maiden of the new wave always knew how to give innocence a sinister edge. Psychedelic influences would follow but on this single the Banshees were all about threat and fear.
8. Bela Lugosi's Dead - Bauhaus
How to invent goth rock in one single. Tongue in cheek but also teeth in neck, still sounds unusual and potent.
9. The Jezebel Spirit - Eno and Byrne
Two leftfield heavyweights join forces to scare the trousers off us with a track that actually samples the troubling sounds of an exorcism. Not a big smash in the discos.
10. Twin Peaks - Main Title Theme
One of the strangest (and best) TV shows ever, the title music was sleepy and still, yet carried such an underlying doom it gave you the willies before the disturbing plot even got underway.
THE R0CKING VICAR
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