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August 2, 2019
Note Books - Charming Disaster
The Note Books series features musicians discussing their literary side. Previous contributors have included John Darnielle, John Vanderslice, Mark Olson, Mac McCaughan, and others.
Charming Disaster is a Brooklyn band inspired by Gothic literature and film. The band, consisting of Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris, recently released its third album SPELLS + RITUALS.
In their own words, here is the Note Books entry from Charming Disaster:
Charming Disaster is a band influenced at least as much by books as by other music. We’ve always both been omnivorous readers with a taste for the dark, but since starting this project in 2012 we’ve been reading a lot of the same books, which has led to a shared universe of ideas we can both inhabit. These are a few of the books that helped inspire the songs on our third album, SPELLS + RITUALS.
Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock’n’Roll Group by Ian Svenonius
This book of interviews conducted with dead rock musicians via seance influenced our approach to the whole album, especially the concepts of rock group as gang/cult and performance as occult ritual.
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Dark bargains, ambition run amok, witches with weird powers, indelible bloodstains...there’s a lot to draw from in the Scottish play. We quote from it in “Blacksnake,” and we really channel it in “Wishing Well,” which involves lust for power and a deal gone very wrong.
The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum
This thrilling history of forensic medicine in Prohibition-era NYC includes a detail that captured our imaginations: during a certain era, everything from medicine to household cleaners to rat poison came in a glass bottle, which sometimes led to fatal mixups; eventually manufacturers started making poison bottles out of textured blue glass to reduce the possibility of confusion. “Blue Bottle Blues” playfully explores these opportunities for carelessness, accidents, and foul play.
“Lull” by Kelly Link
Everyone should definitely go out and read everything by Kelly Link, because she’s a genius and her spooky, strange stories are so weird and good and utterly unique, but this one in particular is a favorite--not just because it contains multiple nested story-within-a-stories, some of which take place backwards, but because there’s this really great Devil character in it, playing spin the bottle in a closet with a cheerleader. Our sympathetic devil in “Devil May Care” is partly inspired by Kelly Link’s Devil.
Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales by Sibelan Forrester
This collection of fairy tales and essays about the Russian witch Baba Yaga was an invaluable resource when we decided to expand beyond the Greek, Norse, and Egyptian mythologies we’ve drawn from in other songs. The character who inspired “Baba Yaga” is fascinatingly ambiguous, usually menacing but occasionally helping the heroes in these stories. She’s so fierce we thought she deserved a song of her own.
Sherlock Holmes (The Five Orange Pips, The Valley of Fear, etc.) by Arthur Conan Doyle
Conan Doyle’s world of secret societies, purloined letters, false allegiances, and plot twists provided inspiration when we were writing “Belladonna Melodrama,” a (doomed) love story set over a backdrop of Victorian espionage, dark and stormy nights, poisoned daggers, and other over-the-top gothic literary tropes.
Locke & Key by Joe Hill
In this horror graphic novel series, an evil spirit trapped in a well uses her powers of persuasion and beauty to trick the person who finds her into freeing her, an idea we borrowed for “Wishing Well.”
Tintin (any of them) by Hergé; 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne; The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
In “Heart of Brass” we wanted to create a cinematic, highly visual, Tintin-esque landscape in which to place a couple of steampunk adventurers (and every trope of that genre we could think of, from dirigibles to the Nautilus). Hugo Cabret’s automaton makes a special appearance, along with a monogrammed handkerchief that flutters from verse to verse.
Charming Disaster links
the band's website
the band on Bandcamp
also at Largehearted Boy:
Previous Note Books submissions (musicians discuss literature)
Antiheroines (interviews with up and coming female comics artists)
Atomic Books Comics Preview (highlights of the week's comics & graphic novel releases)
Book Notes (authors create playlists for their book)
guest book reviews
musician/author interviews
Soundtracked (directors discuss their film's soundtracks)
weekly music release lists
