Jeff and Ellia.
Charming Disaster are a musical duo self-described as "goth-folk", formed in 2012 by Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris. Many of their songs are dark love songs or themed around topics like witchcraft and mythology, with the occasional Outlaw Couple song thrown in, but they also have a concept album Our Lady of Radium based around the life of Marie Curie. Their website can be found here
.
Discography
- Love, Crime, and Other Trouble (2015)
- Cautionary Tales (2017)
- SPELLS + RITUALS (2019)
- Our Lady of Radium (2022)
- Super Natural History (2023)
They might be familiar to some tropers because their song "Ghost Story" was featured on Welcome to Night Vale.
Charming Disaster contains examples of:
- Concept Album: Our Lady of Radium is essentially a musical biography of Marie Curie.
- Dating Catwoman: "Showgirl" is about a police officer who falls in love with a mobster's girlfriend, who's far from innocent herself.
- Frankenstein's Monster: "Be My Bride Of Frankenstein" is themed around this. Clearly based around the Universal films rather than the book, with the monster depicted as "not so smart" and references to Igor and "fire bad".
- In Love with the Gangster's Girl: The male narrator of "Showgirl" is a cop who falls hard for a mafia boss' girlfriend. He was trying to arrest her boyfriend anyway, but the showgirl provides him with some extra incentive.
- Let's Duet: All the songs are duets between Bisker and Morris, often with each playing a different character, but sometimes they act as omniscient narrators.
- My Instincts Are Showing: Among the many hurdles faced by the Star-Crossed Lovers in "Little Black Bird" is the fact that, now that he's been turned into a fox, the male lover can't resist attacking and hunting birds... including the love of his life, who has been turned into one.
- Outlaw Couple: "Grifters" is a song about two con artists in a relationship, neither entirely sure if the other one is going to screw them over. "Murderer" is about a couple burying the body of someone they killed and preparing to go on the run, while "Driving To Idaho" could be a sequel to that song, the couple...well, driving to Idaho...with a "shovel in the back seat, secrets in the front" and trying to avoid the police.
- Resurrected Romance:
- "Ghost Story" is about a married couple, with the husband's ghost coming back to haunt the wife, since he promised to never leave her. She's more than happy with this arrangement.
- Subverted in "Snake Bit," where the male narrator tries to bring his dead wife back from the Underworld. This being a retelling of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, he fails, with the twist that the wife never actually wanted to be brought back to begin with, and made sure he'd fail.Did you think you could just waltz in here
and carry me away?
- Scary Musician, Harmless Music: While the lyrical themes can be quite dark, the music itself is fairly soft. The music videos, on the other hand, can get considerably darker with the macabre and occult imagery, and Ellia in particular usually dresses very goth.
- Sexy Secretary: Unsurprisingly, "Secretary" is about a man who's in love with his secretary, considering her to be this. Though the lyrics hint her intentions are a bit more sinister than wanting to have an affair.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: The Fox and The Bird from "Little Black Bird." Both were once humans who fell in love, but the woman was married to a cruel and jealous sorcerer, who turned her into a black bird and her lover into a fox in revenge. They find each other again and even recognize each other, but due to the inherent dangers of life as an animal and their own wild instincts, they realize they can never be together. They opt for Together in Death.Darling red Foxy, there's no future for us
I'm doomed in the sky as you are in the forest
I'll perch by your ear and sing our sad story
Darling red Foxy, I won't fly away
For I fear this might be the end of my days - Sympathetic Adulterer:
- The female narrator of "Little Black Bird" is married to an abusive man with a jealous streak, and she eventually falls in love with a kind and loving prince. It ends... poorly, but the lovers are portrayed as tragic romantic heroes.
- "A Glow About Her" is about Marie Curie's affair with a married man after her own husband died. The scandal threatens to ruin her career, but since the man's wife is physically abusive, she affair itself is portrayed as being understandable.
- Technician/Performer Team-Up: The song "Grifters", sung as a duet, is about a couple of con artists and the repeated line "With your skills and my good looks, the fish will be begging for the hook" suggests they operate like this trope.
