If you like to chill with a good Americana murder ballad, there’s no need to wait for October and the approach of Halloween for a satisfying serving of musical macabre. The September Spirit Ball is bringing folk vaudeville, gothic cabaret music and whimsy on the dark side to a favorite Nelson County haunt.
Charming Disaster is touring behind new music from “The Double,” the Brooklyn, New York-based goth-folk duo’s seventh album. Friday’s show at Rapunzel’s Coffee and Books in Lovingston will unite the duo with Please Don’t Tell, the Charlottesville-based chamber cabaret trio of Christina Fleming, Nicole Rimel and Anna Hennessy.
Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris, the singer-songwriter team behind Charming Disaster, said they enjoyed performing previously with Please Don’t Tell at the Southern Cafe and Music Hall in Charlottesville.
“They’re so talented, and they’re hilarious,” Bisker told The Daily Progress. “The more spooky and gothy people are on stage, the more fun it is.”
If you dress in darker hues and prefer not to leave home without a healthy dose of black eyeliner, you’ll find kindred spirits at this ball. But Bisker and Morris say their music doesn’t settle into stereotypes. Everybody, it seems, has a fascination with the topics in the duo’s original music, which include true crime, mythology, science, magic and love gone just plain wrong.
Charming Disaster, long inspired by the dark humor of illustrator Edward Gorey and filmmaker Tim Burton, has explored its share of spine-tingling topics.
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In its 2022 album “Our Lady of Radium,” the duo dove into the life of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Marie Curie and the enduring half-life of her groundbreaking work with radium, including the agonizing radiation illnesses and deaths of the factory workers known as the “Radium Girls” who paid dearly for painting watch parts with early glow-in-the-dark pigments.
“Cautionary Tales,” a 2017 album, explores voodoo, Vikings and vampires. The song order on “Spells + Magic” from 2019 ended up mirroring a traditional tarot card spread.
Bisker recalled playing an annual gig at a science institute where even the just-the-facts crowd embraced its fascination with darker topics.
“This very nice older lady came up to us after the show and asked if we’d heard of an Australian lady who’d poisoned her family,” Bisker said. “I think a lot of people have a lot of interest in mortality and things that brush up against it. It’s remarkable that our songs about poison or the underworld can make people feel better.”
Morris and Bisker assure audience members that being interested in death and true crime is completely normal, and endlessly fascinating. Exploring those topics with like-minded listeners also offers a sense, as Morris said, that “there’s someone else with me, and I’m not alone.”
Curiosity is healthy, the songwriters say.
“It’s natural to be interested in things you don’t understand,” Bisker said, adding that it’s a positive thing to “approach the world with a sense of curiosity.”
The team has written music together since 2012, and Morris said that pursuing interesting topics leads to some appealing musical adventures. “We often write from the point of view that there’s a story behind it, and we like to find the backstories,” Morris said.
Jane Dunlap Sathe (434) 978-7249
jsathe@dailyprogress.com
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