Washington, DC – Brooklyn, New York’s goth-folk duo Charming Disaster rolled into Washington, DC to play with local support from DC area’s eclectic band Boy Meets Pearl.
Unfortunately, due to extremely bad traffic and an event at the Washington Navy Yard which made parking nearly impossible, I was unable to see Boy Meets Pearl and hope at some point in the future I can catch them live.
I was introduced to Charming Disaster‘s music by my friend Caza Blanca, a burlesque performer who obtained permission to use the song “Be My Bride Of Frankenstein” from the album Spells + Rituals for her Bride of Frankenstein burlesque routine. Since that time, I have listened to a number of songs from their five albums and I liked what I heard in terms of musicality and diversity of the subject matter for their songs. I like to see bands live, so when I saw that Charming Disaster was coming to DC I figured, “let’s go!”
Because of the previously mentioned traffic/parking debacle, I missed hearing “Days Are Numbered” and sat down as they started playing “Bad Luck Hard Rock”. My impression of Charming Disaster is that they reminded me of one-man bands such as Morgan O’Kane and Phillip Roebuck with a Vaudevillian aesthetic with unique, funky clothing and macabre, thought-provoking lyrics. Before they would play the next song, Jeff Morris, the guitarist and vocalist would walk out into the audience and have a random audience member select a tarot card, which would be shown to the audience before being placed on a picture frame. The tarot card would indicate what song would be played next. I found this to be quite unique and a cool way to engage the crowd and make them part of the show as opposed to just yelling out what the next song would be.
In a set that was criminally too short, Charming Disaster played three songs from their album Super Natural History released March 3rd of this year as well as songs from Love, Crime & Other Trouble and Spells + Rituals. While I can’t speak for the majority of the audience, Caza and I wanted to hear a lot more. This is a fun band that you should take the time to listen to and when the opportunity presents itself, to see them live.
Charming Disaster SETLIST
Days Are Numbered
Bad Luck Hard Rock
Blacksnake
Ghost Story
Monsters
Grifters
Grimoire
Blue Bottle Blues
Paris Green
Show Date: June 02, 2023
