Brooklyn-based Goth-Folk duo Charming Disaster have announced their upcoming seventh album, The Double, which “explores the world that exists behind the one we know.” The album features songs “inspired by nature, mortality, magic, ritual, and literary genres ranging from science fiction to Victorian horror.”
The new album was co-Produced by band members Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris with longtime collaborator, recording engineer Don Godwin. All but one of the ten tracks were recorded at Tonal Park in Takoma Park, MD, with one song recorded by circus music composer Peter Bufano in Boston, MA.
The Double will be released on CD, as a 12-inch colored vinyl LP, and on all digital platforms on May 16, 2025. The vinyl will be released in a 2-disc package that also includes Charming Disaster’s 2024 compilation Time Ghost, a collection of singles released over the last decade.
The new album features an array of collaborators. Co-producer Don Godwin, who has worked on Charming Disaster’s entire discography, contributed bass, drums, and horns, as well as engineering and mixing.
The song “Haunted Lighthouse” features Broadway percussionist Mike Dobson along with circus composer Peter Bufano, who played piano and accordion, and engineered the track at Cirkestra World Headquarters in Boston, MA (with additional tracking at Tonal Park).
The song “Scavengers” features cello recorded by Kate Wakefield of the duo Lung, who also created the string arrangement for “Beautiful Night.” Stefan Zeniuk of Gato Logo contributed saxophone to “Green Things.”
In conjunction with The Double, Charming Disaster is releasing the second edition of their “oracle deck” (similar to a Tarot deck). The Charming Disaster Oracle Deck contains 72 cards (including 12 new cards for the second edition), each representing one of the songs from Charming Disaster’s discography.
The cards feature illustrations commissioned from more than thirty different artists. The deck can be used as a divination tool, or as a visual accompaniment to Charming Disaster’s music. The duo themselves use these cards in their live performances to determine their sets through the element of chance.
Most recently, the duo put out two releases in 2024: Time Ghost, an album-length collection of songs released as singles between 2013 and 2024, and Dance Me to the End of Bela Lugosi’s Lovesong, an EP of covers paying tribute to a few of the band’s influences: Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love,” “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus, and The Cure’s “Lovesong.”
