Is the Vampire Lestat’s Latest Single a Bop or Flop?
“Here come the gays / Here comes the fear.”
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist turned pulp fantasist Daniel Molloy is working on his follow-up project to the best-selling gothic “memoir” Interview With the Vampire, and his choice of subject has us wondering just how long he’ll keep the kayfabe up. Molloy will be sitting down for an extended interview docuseries with the elusive glam-rocker Lestat, who rose to fame not long after the release of IWTV, taking his stage name from the book’s breakout character, Lestat de Lioncourt. Part of “the vampire” Lestat’s whole gimmick is maintaining the premise that he is the 18th-century vampire in the flesh, and we get an extended look at that dynamic in this trailer for the rock doc.
Lestat rolls up in a Brat (Prince) green snakeskin and feather jacket and attitude to match, shooing away the makeup person (doesn’t need it) and tampering with the camera (and Daniel?) with his vampire magic. There are a lot of great details here: the jug labeled “fake blood,” the guy holding the clapboard with the “Armand Told the Truth” tattoo, Molloy’s Errol Morris–style use of an Interrotron to conduct the filmed interview. There’s also a great offscreen cameo from AMC producer Mark Johnson, because that’s where the season will air (no release date has been set).
The trailer previews Lestat’s latest single, “Long Face,” which was also released with a lyric video on YouTube. But is it a bop or a flop? I polled some of the band’s biggest fans on staff at Vulture.
“The lyrics need another round of rewrites and the guitar hook sounds like something you’d play on the easiest mode of Rock Band, and yet I’ve had it on repeat for an hour. So sign me up for the full album. It’s a bop.” —Julie Kosin
“Sam Reid’s regular line deliveries are basically the equivalent of a Baroque painting of a hot man glaring at you (think Caravaggio’s David With the Head of Goliath painting, but sexy), so I’m unsurprised that his singing voice is the exact same thing. Big fan of how his ‘ooh ooh ooh, wah aah’ sounds like Jim Morrison doing a Dracula impression. It’s a bop. I’m so sorry to Stuart Townsend for getting replaced as Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and now having his rock star Lestat from Queen of the Damned shown up so thoroughly.” —Roxana Hadadi
“This reminds me a lot of one of my favorite fictional rock songs of all time, Scott Pilgrim’s ‘Black Sheep’ by the Clash at Demonhead, with that chugging bass and slinky attitude. Love his laconic Count Chocula–meets–Disturbed ‘ooh ah ah.’ Of course, love the line ‘Here come the gays.’ In the words of another famous beautiful illiterate, ‘Here we go, mama.’” —Rebecca Alter
[Note: We must give credit where credit is due to actor Sam Reid, whose body is being used as a vessel by the vampire Lestat for this performance.]
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