I encountered NYC's Charming Disaster at possibly the best of all times and locations. The first song that hooked me was a charming, rhythmically irresistible flight of fancy about a floating head and the shock of its owner, who had awoken Gregor-style with the realization that something had gone terribly wrong in the attic so to speak... only instead of having become an enormous insect, the song depicts the sense of detachment that tails one's literal separation from their shoulders. It's pretty hard to find folk that is as spellbinding as it is humorous, but Charming Disaster executes such a feat while barely breaking as much as a cold sweat. The performance I caught of theirs was in a cigar bar in Milwaukee with a reputation for being haunted by some of Capon's former associates, as well as a disgruntled sailor and something villainous that keeps trying to break out of their basement storage room (I paid for a supernatural tour of the place and I'm still not what the deal is with this last pushy poltergeist, but I did get the sense that the fewer questions I asked, the better). It was two weeks before Halloween when I caught the show and the entire bar was decorated like a scene from What We Do In the Shadows was about to be filmed there. Cobbwebs and mutilated limbs made of molded plastic covered the interior like a blizzard sent by Baphomet. I probably would have enjoyed any band in this setting, but Charming Disaster's lighthearted macabre felt particularly fitting as it met my ears through the interceding fog of cigar smoke. It feels somewhat fateful that I would pursue their latest album Super Natural History in the aftermath of that evening. It served as a constant companion the subsequent week and All Hallows Eve itself, and will likely stay in rotation through the rest of fall. The album is dedicated to the permeable barrier between the natural and paranatural worlds- blurring and smudging the finely drawn partition between the ordinary and the extraordinary- mixing lists of ingredients for baneful incantations, and recollections of the timeless legacy of deathless hags, with not-so-subtle odes to tangible, if insoluble, creatures, such as that sage of the sea, the great manta ray. The mythic becomes cordially accessible, while the previously attainable becomes eerily paradoxical. Part of the album's success in these endeavors is its beguiling nature. A sense of wonder and true innocence permeates these jaunty tunes, while never entirely losing sight of the proximity to danger that they solicit with the wittershine weft of their peaky purple prose. It's kind of like Coven meets the Carpenters, or Captain & Tennille if they had barely escaped the collapse of the Process Church with their lives and immortal souls intact. A playful invitation to safely frolic in the fringe of the unknown, that ultimately respects its borders with the precipious of genuine peril. Super Natural History has taught me many lessons these last few weeks, most notably, to forget my cares and learn to thrive in the mystic of the mundane and the lurid alike.
