From the bowels of Brooklyn emerges The Double, Charming Disaster’s new searing, soaring studio album—a gateway into a realm where nature entwines with the supernatural and time itself unravels. On May 16, 2025, Grimrose Manor’s favorite gothic-folk duo, made up of Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris, will unveil ten new songs. Co-produced with longtime engineer Don Godwin, their latest release invites listeners to stray beyond the familiar world into a landscape of spells, time travel, and vampiric tales.
Founded in 2012 and steeped in a kind of sinister folklore you might find discussed at a dinner party with The Brothers Grimm, Edward Gorey, and Tim Burton, Charming Disaster has chronicled myth, mortality, and magic with a haunted vaudeville flair. The Double picks up this legacy. The lead single, “Trick of the Light,” whose video premiered exclusively on Grimrose Manor, layers Dracula-inspired themes over a whimsically macabre tune that teases the mind with its repeated refrain of “It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right.” But guess what: It’s anything but all right.
Beneath the gothic veneer and theatrical flourishes, Morris and Bisker’s razor-sharp pen truly ensnares the imagination. Their voices—often sweetly unpolished—serve less as virtuoso showcases than as intimate narrators of shadowy tales. Their melodies, occasionally idiosyncratic, twist and turn like cobbled alleyways in a Victorian nightmare. Yet, it’s their lyrics—brimming with puns worthy of Poe, wry as a Wildean epigram, and as heady as an opium dream—that compel repeat listens.
This dyad understands that the truest magic lies in language itself. And live, their on-stage banter—equal parts sarcastic stage whisper and conspiratorial wink—transforms each set into a midnight salon, where clever wordplay and playful repartee keep the crowd on delighted tenterhooks. In Charming Disaster’s world, the raw notes may be humble, but the dark poetry and theatrical charisma elevate every performance into an enchanting cabaret.
Recorded mostly at Tonal Park in Takoma Park, MD, The Double also features a singular collaboration from circus composer Peter Bufano in Boston—a fitting touch for “Haunted Lighthouse,” which boasts the percussive theatrics of Broadway’s Mike Dobson and Bufano’s spectral accordion. Elsewhere, cellist Kate Wakefield of Lung lends mournful strings to “Scavengers” and “Beautiful Night,” deepening the duo’s exploration of death, depression, and resilience.
The Double’s vinyl edition doubles as a time capsule, pairing the new LP with Time Ghost, a 2024 anthology of Charming Disaster’s decade-long single releases. And for the devoted mystic, the band’s updated Oracle Deck (12 new cards!) returns—each card an emblem of their songs, featuring the works of more than 30 artists, and reshuffled in live shows to conjure a setlist from chance and spectacle.
The second single, “New Moon,” was just released on all streaming services. And as the May 16 album release date nears, fans can pre-order on Bandcamp in digital download, CD, and colored-vinyl formats, summoning you across the looking-glass of reality into an enchanting musical seduction—if you dare step inside.
Watch the music video for The Double’s first single here:
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