Written by: Dave Cantrell

Let’s say you take joy in the macabre (who doesn’t?). Let’s say your taste in horror is infused by the romantic (and the other way around). Let’s say you intrinsically trust Stereo Embers aesthetic sense but either by some quirk simply missed our two earlier ventures into this duo’s dizzying allure (here and here and, no worries, we’re all living busy lives in troubled times), well, today is your lucky day, it would appear, as said duo – Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris – trafficking under the nom de (ever-engaging) doom Charming Disaster, have graced us with The Double, their seventh long-player since their emergence a decade ago and indeed, as anyone with any sense would wisely expect, it’s a gem, shaped and faceted in an oddly solidly rock and rolling pop fashion, riveting, fascinating, its spirit that of a dervish schooled in the disciplines of ecstatic restraint. Or something. It’s fair to say this pair and the music they make tend to challenge the established contours of critical response and that, as you, wise reader, already know, is a very good thing indeed.

Co-self-produced again with masterful co-conspirator Dan Godwin (who also brings bass, percussion and horn work to the party, joining a tight clutch of other session mates whose names we’ll try to get to – Bisker and Morris handle almost everything – as we unspool this record’s many, um, charms and if we don’t we’ll name they down below as they def deserve kudos), we begin, not entirely surprisingly, under the shadowy branches of a “Black Locust,” the track materializing with a subtly mounting urgency, slowly growing until wouldn’t ya know it it’s unfurled into a dirge of some consequence, pulling us without resistance into the enveloping whole, an act of understated persuasion that could we be considered a Charming Disaster trademark.

From that auspicious opening we find such jewels as “New Moon” with all its crafty wiles, the two alternately trading vocals then harmonizing (which at one point involves them each singing different lyrics from the other with works far better than one might expect); “Time Machine” that plays out like a trickster’s waltz with trickster stanzas (“change your direction / rewind the reel (or ‘real‘?) // unwrap the present / how does it feel?“); the almost mournful “Scavengers,” that adjective leant some weight by guest Kate Winfield’s cello which also, as it happens, brings its subtle misterioso vibe to the next up, rather swoonsome “Beautiful Night” and here, we suppose, is an opportune moment to credit The Double‘s track flow, how the album entire rather cascades from open to close like a delicate, deliberate whirlwind. It’s an asset we feel is too often given short shrift these days but here has clearly been given a degree of considered care. Thus does “Vitriol,” following on “Beautiful Night”‘s gentle – tender, even – goth dark, balance/complement its predecessor by carrying forth its rhythm’s easy lope while bearing a more adventurous arrangement before handing the reins to the more lighthearted, playfully sinister “Haunted Lighthouse” with its calliope-like style which in turn lends its rhythmic structure to the more stripped-down “Gang of Two” before “Grim Things” closes proceedings with a sweet valedictory air as if standing on the creaky porch of that haunted lighthouse addressing that gathering of ghosts and ghouls and assorted other fleeting menaces that came before it, offering them all something akin to a harbinger in reverse.

All of which is to say that in The Double we have one of 2025’s most beguiling, enduring albums thus far and we here at SEM, with all our own attendant ghosts past and present milling about the office, can but highly recommend it. I mean, it’s like Halloween in the springtime and how could anyone not welcome that?

PLAYERS:

Ellia Bisker – vocals, ukelele, organ, piano, glockenspiel, percussion

Jeff Morris – vocals, guitar, organ, piano, percussion

Dan Godwin – bass, drums, percussion, horns

Peter Bufano – piano, accordion on “Beautiful Night”

Mike Dobso – percussion on “Haunted Lighthouse”

Kate Wakefield – cello on “Scavengers” and “Beautiful Night”

Stefan Zaniuk – reeds on “Black Locust”