Are you in the mood for Halloween yet? Why not? Everyone is getting into it now. Etsy's sending out daily e-mails filled with Halloween merchandise, stores are stocking candy and decorations, and user-generated media sites are getting into the spirit of the season. It's the most wonderful time of the year. Kristen Lawrence, a classically trained singer and organist, set out to write original Halloween songs. For a holiday with such a rich history and mythology, there really isn't much original music. If more artists like Kristen Lawrence stepped out with songs like these, it wont be long before you can't change a radio station without hearing a Halloween song.

What Kristen has going for her is a great ear for Baroque music. She's doing very restrained arrangements on the organ that can open up for fusion elements. The drums in "Souling Song" are not period appropriate; they're not meant to be. They're a pulsing tribal drum pattern designed to evoke long-forgotten histories of fire-filled rituals on the night where the wall between the living and the dead is supposed to weaken.

Her vocal is simply beautiful. She knows how to tell a story with her voice. She shifts her tone to match the content of the song without losing the emotive performance style.