The road to Disaster ends in Coney Island!
A Brooklyn duo known for its murder ballads and witchcraft-inspired tunes will wrap up its first national tour with a ghoulish concert at the Sodom by the Sea. The band Charming Disaster will open for surreal rock act Cookie Tongue at Coney Island USA on April 19, launching the 2019 “Music of Curiosities” series. Both bands drawn on folk tales and mystical stories for their songs, said Charming Disaster’s ukulele player.
“The subject matter tends to be on the darker side. We get a lot of our inspiration from folk lore, fairy tales, and ancient mythologies,” said Ellia Bisker, who also sings and plays piano with bandmate and guitarist Jeff Morris.
Bisker, who used to play with a circus show, promised that the concert will be as wild as the duo’s music.
“The shows are highly theatrical and pretty interactive. For example, we’ll go out into the audience and sing in the middle of people,” she said. “We like to break the fourth wall.”
Visitors to the show can get an advance listen to Charming Disaster’s upcoming third album, “Spells and Rituals,” set to debut on June 9. The 11-track album, filled with songs like “Soft Apocalypse” and “Be My Bride of Frankenstein,” represents an evolution of the band’s music, said Morris.
“It’s a natural progression. It’s definitely in the spirit of the first two, but I think it’s more sophisticated and more ambitious,” he said.
The gothic-folk duo formed in 2012, after the pair met in a Park Slope bar and decided to write music together, as a side project to their respective bands. The musical chemistry soon led to Charming Disaster becoming their primary focus, said Morris.
“It was quickly taking up a lot of our creative energy,” he said. “We found that we work very collaboratively and complement each other really well.”
The new band allowed each of them to focus on the gothic, noir source material they both enjoy. But working together has not been without challenges, said Bisker.
“As a two-piece band we have to do a lot more with a lot less,” said Bisker. “There’s less instruments, but this project focuses a lot more on storytelling that we find interesting.”
Charming Disaster at Sideshows by the Seashore [1208 Surf Ave. at W. 12th Street in Coney Island, (718) 372-5159, www.coney
