From Charming Disaster's 2025 album THE DOUBLE comes "New Moon": a dreamy incantation, a meditation on urban insomnia, and an immersion in t
Oh hello Tumblr we just dropped a new music video for our song "New Moon" (filmed partly in our actual apartments, and more importantly, featuring our actual cats). Hope you enjoy.
Charming Disaster sings from a haunted Victorian boudoir, hung all round with silky luxury and velvet comfort and wreathed in scent that might be old fashioned perfume, or, alternatively, poison. The duo of Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris, from Brooklyn, floats through macabre storylines and lavish, steam-punk arrangements, their music sweet and disturbing and faintly archaic. This seventh and latest album, The Double, explores the nasty side of dopplegangers, twins, clones and partners in crime. Here, bad news comes in twos.
Consider “Gang of Two,” a tipsy waltz giddy on its own huffed fumes. Stylish, lushly arranged, utterly unrepentant, the song circles a doomed, damned partnership between two petty crooks, observing, “It’s hard to say goodbye/when you’re chained side by side.” Except for the occasional slash of electric guitar, a sporadic rush of dissonance, the tune would work in early 20th century vaudeville, old-fashioned in timbre but starkly modern in its lack of sentimentality.
“Trick of the Light” is even spookier, with disembodied vocal coos riding an undulating bass riff. The song gains muscle and density as it goes, culminating in a rousing all-hands chorus of “It’s all right, it’s all right, tonight.” Still the riveting part is the spare verse, seeping like poison gas though the cracks in the walls and punctuated by plinks of glockenspiel and stray, broken keyboard stabs.
The duo has mastered the trick of turning a whirling waltz into a dance macabre, its three-timed confections laced with the smell of death. “Haunted Lighthouse,” is at once a ghost story and a sea shanty, reeling with accordion trills and rollicking dangerously like the deck of a ship.
You can certainly draw connections to other dark, steam-punk-y folk outfits, such as Faun Fables and Puerto Muerto, and like these bands, Charming Disaster insists on a certain amount of suspended disbelief. It’s a form of theater, complete with archaic instruments, costumes, make-up and gothic literary references, and it’s not for everyone, but Charming Disaster does it well.
Interview with Charming Disaster about their new album The Double
Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris speak about narrative songwriting, occult aesthetics, and how their duo evolved into a conceptual archive
Charming Disaster, the duo of Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris, formed in Brooklyn in 2012 and have since cultivated a body of work steeped in occult symbolism, murder balladry, and theatrical noir. Drawing equally from the American folk tradition and cabaret’s…
Interview with Charming Disaster about their new album The Double
Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris speak about narrative songwriting, occult aesthetics, and how their duo evolved into a conceptual archive
Charming Disaster, the duo of Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris, formed in Brooklyn in 2012 and have since cultivated a body of work steeped in occult symbolism, murder balladry, and theatrical noir. Drawing equally from the American folk tradition and cabaret’s…
From Charming Disaster's upcoming album THE DOUBLE comes "Trick of the Light," inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and a music video paying homage to horror film classics. Who is the vampire and who is the victim? Don't you worry your pretty head about it.
"Trick of the Light" just dropped as a single on all major platforms. Add it to your vampire playlists, share it with your friends, bite it on the neck.
video production credits:
direction/art/edit: Zolomon Zelko
cinematography: Max Losson
camera dept: Isabella Nemcik
special appearance: Finley Stein
straitjacket provided by Magic Brian
special thanks to Green-Wood Cemetery
music production credits:
written and composed by Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris
Ellia Bisker: vocals, ukulele, organ, piano, glockenspiel, percussion
Jeff Morris: vocals, guitar, organ, piano, percussion
Don Godwin: bass, drums
Engineered and mixed by Don Godwin at Tonal Park (Takoma Park, MD)
Mastered by Stefan Heger (Cologne, Germany)
We just cracked open the LAST BOX of SPELLS + RITUALS records—only 24 copies remain of our first vinyl pressing (we made these in 2019, before we re-released our first two albums on vinyl).
In honor of this momentous occasion, each one of these records will be autographed, and if you like we’ll inscribe it to you or the person of your choosing (leave us a note in your order to let you know if/how you want yours personalized).
Get one while you still can: charmingdisaster.bandcamp.com/album/spells-rituals
Oh hello, if you live in/near Brooklyn and enjoy our music and indie horror short films, good news!
Secrets of the Dead
Sunday, Jan 19 at Sleepwalk
251 Bushwick Ave, E Williamsburg (steps from the Montrose L)
7pm live set by Charming Disaster
8pm film screaming, we mean screening
GET TICKETS
P.S. There MIGHT be a sneak preview viewing of an unreleased new music video, just saying
MELANIE's CHARMING DISASTER Says 'Aloha' to Lucifer This Halloween
The late Melanie described “Aloha Lucifer” as “Such a happy song, because even the Devil probably needs to take a summer vacation.”
Well yes. Especially with Halloween just around the corner.
Sadly, Melanie did not live to record a full studio version of the song. But she did tape a great “live in the studio” version, and as the end of October draws closer and we find ourselves missing already…
Announcing the Kickstarter campaign for our next album, The Double, and the second edition of the Charming Disaster Oracle Deck! Pledge to support its creation, choose exciting rewards, and find out more here: https://charmingdisaster.com/kickstarter
The Double is a new collection of songs about myth, magic, and mortality, with songs about: Time travel! Alchemy! Magical rituals! Jailbreaks! Count Dracula! High seas adventure! The ominous wonders of the botanical world (and its inevitable takeover)! And more! It will be released on CD as well as a double vinyl album that also includes the first vinyl pressing of our singles collection Time Ghost. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL: We are also creating an updated edition of the sold-out Oracle Deck inspired by Charming Disaster’s music.