A joke in a Paris interview grew teeth and became a whole record. Seattle’s The Darts return with their most ambitious album yet, ‘Halloween Love Songs,’ out now on Adrenalin Fix Music. Produced by Grammy winner Mark Rains at Station House Studio in Los Angeles, it captures a band at full voltage, a road-seasoned unit distilling years of touring and late-night writing into a sharp, cinematic garage-punk statement. Listen here.
The spark came during a 2024 Rock n Folk interview, when singer and keyboard player Nicole Laurenne joked that Halloween deserved more than one novelty hit. By the time she got home, the idea had sharpened. “I didn’t want an album that was just monster-costumes on the playground,” she says. “Side A is full of colorful, early-evening energy, the kind of songs you could blast while the neighborhood lights are flicking on. But Side B is the soundtrack for after dark, when the bonfire is raging. It’s for sweaty middle-of-the-night dancing, making out on a bed of empty candy wrappers, and spinning through an all-nighter apocalypse.”
It’s a concept album without the gimmick, more a two-sided mood built from years of shows where danger, joy, humor, sweat, and catharsis all live in the same hour. Side A opens with the slinky strut of “Midnight Creep,” a live favorite with its own custom dance, then expands the early-evening palette through “Zombies on the Metro” and “Every Night Is Halloween,” driven by Nicole’s Farfisa grit, Rebecca Davidson’s guitar snarl, Lindsay Scarey’s low end, and the heavy snap of returning original drummer Rikki Styxx.
Side B is where the night deepens. “Apocalypse,” inspired by the medieval Apocalypse Tapestry in Angers, France, hits with a caveman stomp, Mudhoney-thick fuzz, and a “No Kings” refrain Nicole wrote about shedding oppression, a line that later surfaced as a protest chant across the US before the band had released a note. Cuts like “The Devil Made Me Do It” and “Darkness” push into heavier, chant-driven, hypnotic territory built for sweaty clubs at one in the morning. It’s garage rock with a pulse and a shadow, still wired to The Cramps, The Trashwomen, The Seeds, and Death Valley Girls, but sharpened with modern muscle.
What sets this record apart is the sense of intent. It’s bigger, more focused, and feels like a culmination of years spent on trains, in vans, on festival stages, in basements, and through lineup changes inside the tight-knit world of international garage-punk. The Darts are no strangers to global attention, having sold out shows across Europe, the UK, and North America, moved vinyl faster than labels could repress it, landed KEXP sessions, and earned fans from Dave Vanian to Stephen King to Jello Biafra. True to form, they’ll follow the release with another year of heavy touring across the US, Europe, the UK, and Japan.
The Darts On Tour 2026:
6.10 Jersey City, NJ
6.11 Washington, DC
6.12 Richmond, VA
6.13 Raleigh, NC
6.14 Wilmington, NC
6.17 Savannah, GA
6.18 Athens, GA
6.19 Atlanta, GA
6.20 Nashville, TN
6.21 Louisville, KY
6.23 Indianapolis, IN
6.24 Cleveland, OH
6.25 Rochester, NY
6.26 Lake George, NY
6.27 New Haven, CT
6.28 Brooklyn, NY
8.26 Eugene, OR
8.27 Portland, OR
8.28 Seattle, WA
8.29 Vancouver, BC
8.30 Olympia, WA