Chat #33 - Charming Disaster
"You’re not shoving the planchette around the board. You’re letting it move you.”
Charming Disaster is a Brooklyn-based dark-pop musical duo formed by Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris. Inspired by gothic humor, murder ballads, and cabaret flair, they use two voices, ukulele, guitar, and foot percussion to saunter through their stories. In their interactive Musical Oracle show, the setlist is chosen entirely by chance as audience members draw from the band’s custom Tarot-style divination deck blurring live gig with theatre.
With seven critically acclaimed albums spanning themes of folklore, mythology, and the occult, they have opened for goth and cabaret icons like Rasputina, Voltaire, and The Dresden Dolls, and their music has been featured on Welcome to Night Vale. Whether they are playing historic cemeteries, museums, Joe’s Pub in NYC or Dragon Con - Charming Disaster bring their uncanny Gothic wonderland to the stage.
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11/07/2026, 16:06 - Finbarre:
Welcome to Tarot DMs. Charming Disaster make darkly theatrical songs where occult folklore and deadpan romance meet. Their music carries a hint of the pale pandemonium you might find in a Baudelaire-esque bordello. In this Tarot DMs conversation, the duo take turns to draw the cards with me, Finbarre, to talk about creative partnerships and the shadows that slither between their song notes. Hello.
11/07/2026, 16:07 - Ellia:
Hello, this is Ellia Bisker. I am half of the gothic folk duo Charming Disaster. We are based in New York City, where we’ve been making nerdy, spooky songs inspired by the occult, science, myths and magic since 2012. And I believe Jeff has joined the chat as well now, so we are now at full Charming Disaster disastrousness.
11/07/2026, 16:08 - Jeff: I’m here, friends.
11/07/2026, 16:08 - Finbarre: Hurrah! Welcome, fella!
11/07/2026, 16:08 - Jeff: Good to be here.
11/07/2026, 16:08 - Ellia: As for the recording, I was just messing around with some ukulele sounds. Nothing with shareable results, just some R&D really.
11/07/2026, 16:09 - Finbarre:
Jeff, it’s lovely to see your name on my screen. What have you been up to? How’s your weekend been so far?
11/07/2026, 16:09 - Jeff:
Oh, so far, so good. I’ve just been, let’s see, eating some food and doing some PT exercises for my hands, which have been bothering me lately. But otherwise, I am, I don’t know, excited to be here and chat with you all.
11/07/2026, 16:10 - Ellia: The weekend is still in its infancy here. I just had a really lovely breakfast of kefir with yellow cherries and granola I made.
11/07/2026, 16:12 - Finbarre:
Ellia, no, you’ve just gone and made me hungry. I’ve just had my lunch. I’ve just polished off half a watermelon, and that sounds utterly delicious.
Also, when I was reading what you’ve been up to, I completely misread what you typed. I had what I call a “flub-and-chub moment”. Instead of seeing R&D, I read that as ukulele R&B, which I feel like I’ve got to hear.
Right. We shall crack on with the cards that we have here, and I’m using a very special deck. But before I reveal the secret, I had in mind for the first card some inspiration from the weather.
Antonio Vivaldi has his Summer concerto, which I think is known in Italian as L’estate, and it has such a heavy, oppressive feel, almost suffocating. So although it is bright and sunny and all the rest of it, and usually, I think you guys can take it, I’m going to use the Death card as our first one.
I’m going to take a picture of it and see what you think.
11/07/2026, 16:12 - Finbarre:
11/07/2026, 16:13 - Finbarre: We’re using a deck from the Scapini Tarot from around 1985 and we’ll be starting off, straight out of the traps, with this freaky-looking masterpiece.
11/07/2026, 16:13 - Finbarre:
11/07/2026, 16:14 - Ellia: Oh, that is a…
11/07/2026, 16:14 - Finbarre: A heavy one to begin with. What vibes are we getting from this one?
11/07/2026, 16:14 - Ellia:
Oh my goodness, that is a positively jaunty-looking Death, capering on the severed heads and reaching hands of those who have fallen. I love the bluebird, perhaps a bluebird of happiness flying. It’s so gleeful. I don’t know. Jeff, what do you think?
11/07/2026, 16:15 - Ellia:
You know, in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, which is the one that I usually use, Death looks like one of the knights riding off to war with the battle standard. It resembles the other knights in composition, which are action cards.
And this Death is just staring you in the face and dancing. I’m really into this.
11/07/2026, 16:15 - Jeff:
Oh, yes. I love the dancerly quality of the Death character. And it seems to be on a pond or some sort of water. There are little water plants in the background, maybe water lilies.
11/07/2026, 16:16 - Jeff:
I also love the spine. Instead of a sword, it looks like some sort of disembodied spine being wielded. That’s really cool.
11/07/2026, 16:16 - Jeff:
And look at the hand signals of the drowned souls in the background. Those must have some sort of occult significance.
11/07/2026, 16:16 - Finbarre:
Jeff, I had not noticed the spine in that picture. And Ellia, I love how gleeful you sound upon getting the card that normally turns people pale.
My first question is going to be for Jeff. Into the breach you go, sir. Are you ready?
11/07/2026, 16:17 - Jeff: I’m ready!
11/07/2026, 16:18 - Finbarre:
If my research is right, you’ve spent more than a decade writing about mortality, ghosts and the afterlife.
So the question from the Death card is: has your own relationship with the future changed?
11/07/2026, 16:19 - Ellia: Wow, that’s such an interesting question. I can’t wait to hear what Jeff says.
11/07/2026, 16:20 - Jeff:
My perspective on the Death card is, in one sense, like a Buddhist perspective: death awaits us all, and that is what makes life more vibrant, more special and sweet.
If we were all condemned to death tomorrow and then there was some sort of reprieve, imagine how gleeful and joyful you would be at all the mundane things you see around you. If you were given a new lease on life, even for one more day….
In tarot, I see the Death card as the end of things that you don’t need, sloughing off the old. But to me, it is also an affirmation of the moment, of the now. It is less about thinking of the future and more about being super-present.
As far as it relates to Charming Disaster and how we relate to death in our writing, I think that has come to the fore more and more personally as we’ve delved into these subjects.
11/07/2026, 16:23 - Ellia:
I would chime in as well. I love all of that, Jeff, and it’s very close to what you and I have been talking about on our own over the last few days.
Death also indicates change. As we ourselves get older, that is something that keeps coming up in conversation: how can we roll with those changes? How can we gracefully keep going?
With the grace of this dancer, how do you keep going when your body doesn’t want to do certain things any more? Can we gracefully accept that, as things change, we can keep going with them?
I think about it often. We see musical peers of ours dealing with health issues. I myself have been dealing with some health issues this year. How to deal with that and keep going is the question.
11/07/2026, 16:24 - Jeff: To wit: our PT exercises this morning.
11/07/2026, 16:24 - Ellia: And our upcoming all-theremin album lol.
11/07/2026, 16:25 - Finbarre: Jeff and Ellia, you each plucked that grisly skull up in that answer and kicked it out of the graveyard. No follow-up needed. Wow.
11/07/2026, 16:25 - Finbarre: OK, Ellia next!
11/07/2026, 16:25 - Jeff: Haha.
11/07/2026, 16:25 - Finbarre: Have you got a deck of cards ready to hand?
11/07/2026, 16:25 - Ellia: I have a couple!
11/07/2026, 16:26 - Ellia: Here, I’ll show you what I’ve got.
11/07/2026, 16:26 - Jeff: I have a few, Ellia, if you want me to pull any specific one.
11/07/2026, 16:27 - Ellia:
11/07/2026, 16:27 - Ellia:
11/07/2026, 16:27 - Ellia:
Right now, I’m at home and Jeff is at our rehearsal studio, which is also where the vast collection of tarot decks lives.
My two favourite decks that we have there are the Bea Nettles deck, I forget what its actual name is, and Todd Alcott’s Pulp Tarot. So we could use one of those too.
11/07/2026, 16:28 - Finbarre: Ellia, could you pull one from any deck of your choice, plus one from your oracle deck just for flavour? Jeff can pull the final card a little later.
11/07/2026, 16:29 - Finbarre: With those two cards, Ellia, I’ll come up with your next question. I’m curious to see what you get.
11/07/2026, 16:29 - Ellia: OK, here we go.
11/07/2026, 16:31 - Ellia:
11/07/2026, 16:31 - Finbarre: Also, I adore how much love that RWS deck has visibly received over the years. That’s a trusty deck right there.
11/07/2026, 16:31 - Ellia:
11/07/2026, 16:31 - Ellia:
That Rider-Waite-Smith deck doesn’t even have a flap to keep it shut, so it has to have a rubber band around it if I’m taking it with me anywhere.
11/07/2026, 16:32 - Ellia: I love these two together.
11/07/2026, 16:33 - Finbarre:
Those two unlikely cards make a very interesting chimera. So my tarot question is: when creative conflict begins to feel like chaos, how do you know when to stand your ground, stay and fight, or just abandon a project?
11/07/2026, 16:33 - Jeff: Yes.
11/07/2026, 16:35 - Ellia:
We together, and I alone, are very bad at abandoning projects. We are tenacious. And, um, I don’t know how to answer that.
But I’m also going to push back a little bit on that interpretation of the Five of Wands, because although this could certainly be interpreted as conflict, I also think of this card as being in the thick of it.
What are they doing in this card? Are they battling? Are they building something? Yes, it looks like chaos in this moment. But the querent might be all of these individuals in the card. It could be the same person in a sort of time-lapse photo.
You’re trying stuff, you’re experimenting, you’re doing your R&D, not to be confused with R&B. So I think the only way out is through. That’s sort of my answer to the question. The only way out is through, just working to get to the other side of it, and the process will inform the outcome.
11/07/2026, 16:35 - Ellia:
When I said I love these two cards together, it’s because right now we’re kind of in the thick of preparing to get back on the road after being off tour for the spring season.
And so the Five of Wands followed by the Getaway is very auspicious to me. What will come out of the process is that we will get to be back on the road doing our thing, I hope.
11/07/2026, 16:37 - Jeff:
Yes, exactly as Ellia says, I feel that is a card for getting back on the road. Sometimes there is strife, confusion and friction.
Sometimes the best way to handle that is simply to leave. Just drop everything, don’t engage, and let it go. It’s a kind of tai chi perspective.
11/07/2026, 16:37 - Ellia: Also want to mention the artwork on The Getaway card is by Devon Grieg, a tattoo artist based in Nashville who has tattooed us both.
11/07/2026, 16:38 - Ellia: And the song associated with that card is “Ocean City”.
11/07/2026, 16:38 - Finbarre:
I love that cheeky reinterpretation of, yeah “It’s not a fight, it’s a building and they’re building something great!”
I’m going to see that every time I look at this card now, that instead of some kind of riot or rabble, we’re looking at people who either enjoy clunking sticks together. Why not? Who doesn’t? Or possibly building a bridge too? I do that that.
This will be the last question I’ll be asking and this is the both of you… and this has been given to you as a Gift card one moment.
11/07/2026, 16:38 - Jeff: Though you can never really get away from a tattoo.
11/07/2026, 16:39 - Ellia: Five of Wands as RELENTLESS OPTIMISM lol.
11/07/2026, 16:39 - Finbarre:
11/07/2026, 16:39 - Finbarre:
This one was given to you both by Callie Kazumi, who is a British-Japanese writer who writes freaky, dark, rather unnerving books.
One of them’s called Greedy. Highly recommended.
This is a very psychedelic card for you both.
11/07/2026, 16:40 - Ellia:
Oh, I love this one. Seven of Cups, all your dreams come true. Piercing the mortal veil and this bounty is what’s on the other side. You don’t even know what all these things are just that they’re so much of it. They’re so much richness to this to explore.
11/07/2026, 16:41 - Ellia:
Also, I’m definitely interested in checking out her work. This sounds right up my alley.
11/07/2026, 16:41 - Jeff:
There’s so many choices and like which choice do you want to choose? Do you want to go with the dream, the kind of the fantasy? Do you want to go with reality? Do you want to go with a head with your? That looks like a cup. Do you want to go with a hookah? There’s so many ways to go with this. I love it. It’s so beautiful.
11/07/2026, 16:41 - Finbarre:
You know, I pulled this one out this morning from a Rider-Waite-Smith deck, and I spotted something that I’ve not noticed in 30 years.
That the laurel crown that is suspended in the air, like some kind of apparition.
If you look at the pedestal that it’s actually hovering above, there is a detail that looks like a skull, almost as if to say, revel in fantasy, but beware of hubris.
11/07/2026, 16:42 - Jeff:
Yes, exactly. Or is this glory beyond death? Is this somehow immortality in that sense?
11/07/2026, 16:43 - Finbarre:
Ellia and Jeff, this is the final Tarot DMs question to both of you on the Seven of Cups. And I need to ask about the idea of you having like a research table or a desk that probably is spilling over with Victorian fiction or books of folklore, psychic manuals, obscure texts on natural history or found objects or whatever it is you have in your houses.
How do you choose which fascination deserves to become real in your songs?
11/07/2026, 16:45 - Ellia:
Oh, that’s a really interesting question, too. First of all, how did you get into our houses?
Our studio, I’m picturing the desk that is there that is covered with objects, curiosities, bones, and strange things.
And yes, you’re exactly accurate about the bookshelf contents.
11/07/2026, 16:45 - Jeff:
Oh, that’s a wonderful question. I see as our studio here, which I’m in our rehearsal studio, as being inside a cabinet of curiosities. There’s so many objects here. There’s so many books. There’s so many things that friends and fans have sent us. There’s so many tarot decks. There’s artwork here.
It is like just casting your eye around…. you see things that you haven’t seen in a long time or maybe you’ve never noticed. And it’s kind of like gazing upon a tarot card where you’re observing something and it’s what your own consciousness is resonating with or needs to associate with at that moment that that draws your attention or adds some new insight to what you’re observing.
And we… I’ll let Ellia continue with that.
11/07/2026, 16:45 - Ellia:
The kind of songwriters that we are, people very frequently say, oh, you should write a song about X. And X is usually something that is perfectly interesting on the face of it. And almost never do those things become songs. Not because we’re resistant to ideas, just it rarely works out that way. So we do have a file of stuff that it would be cool to have a song about and once in a while, something does come out of that vault and into a song. But I feel like there’s not that much choice about it.
11/07/2026, 16:46 - Jeff:
Our desk at the studio.
11/07/2026, 16:48 - Ellia:
I think that there’s a kind of feeling of openness or casting about.
There’s a state of mind where you’re kind of letting the gates open to see what comes in. And that state of noticing and curiosity and exploration is the thing that is required for a song to get in.
It’s much less about directing it and making those deliberate choices than it is about seeing what kind of sparkles. What is the shiny bit that catches your eye?
Which is not to say that there aren’t songs that we write deliberately. Like there certainly are. We’ll be like “Oh, we ought to have a song about bats or manta rays or poisonous plants”
And like sometimes we will we will set out to do that purposefully. A lot of the time it is just something that calls to us and then you you chase it down.
11/07/2026, 16:49 - Ellia:
I would add that that state of mind is very similar or even identical to the state of mind that you need to be in if you’re doing a tarot card reading interpretation.
Like, you need to be open and noticing and letting it come to you. You know, you’re not like shoving the planchette around the board. You’re like letting it move you, to mix metaphors of the occult.
11/07/2026, 16:50 - Jeff:
I completely agree with what Ellia is saying as far as the state of mind of being in to let inspiration come to you.
And, you know, we might be starting a song and we don’t even know what the words are yet. We’re just following through music, which is kind of a, you know, that is pre-language kind of connection with the absolute right there, I think.
11/07/2026, 16:51 - Finbarre:
Thank you for sharing those answers and for that picture. My eyes are lingering on each one of those peculiar curiosities and that Wunderkammer that you’ve shown me. Something tells me that that probably expands 360 degrees.
I need you to do two things for me.
So, Jeff, I’d like you to pull a card, whatever deck you fancy, for the next person. And that will be their Gift card. Ellia, I’d like you to tell me a little bit about those Oracle cards that I saw before with your faces on.
11/07/2026, 16:55 - Ellia:
Oh, sure. So we’ve used tarot in our own creative practice for a long time now, at least ten years. Out of that grew a kind of show where we would have audience members draw cards from a deck, and that would determine which songs we played.
We had a concordance where each of the Major Arcana, and subsequently many Minor Arcana cards, corresponded to specific songs of ours. Over time, we started to really want a deck that was more specific to our world, especially as we got down to Minor Arcana cards that were less obviously significant in terms of how they connected to our work.
When we were getting ready to release our album Supernatural History, we decided that was the moment to embark on this deck project. We enlisted artists from all over the world. We have about two dozen artists represented in our deck, which turns out not to be a tarot deck at all, but an oracle deck. I’m sure your listeners know it is sort of like an all-Majors deck, where the meaning of the cards is specific to the deck itself.
These are all archetypes, characters or concepts that show up in our songs. Each of the cards relates to one of our songs. The Getaway card that you saw above corresponds to our song “Ocean City”, which is about a road trip in a stolen car. We also have cards where the song title and the card title are the same.
Because we have so many different artists represented, and because we had to give them creative control over how they interpreted each song to make the image, we inadvertently created a truly magical object.
I think it has several different stages of interpretation, and a lot of different creative energies went into it. Each of the cards is in a totally different style. Even Jeff and I each did a couple of cards ourselves.
There are currently 72 cards in the deck, corresponding to all the songs on our released albums. I guess when we release the next album, we’ll have to make some more cards for it.
11/07/2026, 16:54 - Ellia:
This is the card for “Devil May Care”, illustrated by Madame Onça, creator of the World Spirit Tarot.
11/07/2026, 16:55 - Ellia:
And also, I should add, we made this deck not just for us to run a show with, but it’s an actual working deck. And we sell them at our shows and we sell them online. And they’re beautiful objects. We went all out with the bells and whistles. So they have silver gilt edging.
There’s a guidebook to a guide to divination that was written by a bartender poet friend of ours who did his own interpretation of everything with erudite quotations. It’s a really neat thing. And it’s one of the projects I’m most proud of that we’ve ever done.
11/07/2026, 16:56 - Jeff:
11/07/2026, 16:57 - Jeff:
I have drawn the Knight of Cups from the Fergus Hall tarot deck created for the James Bond film Live and Let Die, which is a wonderful, wonderful deck.
11/07/2026, 16:58 - Finbarre:
Jeff, you are a man of exceptional taste. That was the second tarot deck I bought in, I want to say, 1993, maybe 1994.
And I was just thinking back to Ellia’s description of this barman providing inspiration and stories for the cards. Why is it that all bar people basically personify the Knight of Cups? I love that connection and the way things have come together for you guys.
Okay, we’re almost at the end of our Tarot DMs chat. But before we go, do you have any tours coming up or anything you’d like to tell the reader or listener about?
11/07/2026, 17:00 - Ellia:
We have an extensive string of US tour dates coming up this fall, starting in mid-September and going through early November in the Midwest and the southeastern United States.
Then, in early December, we’ve got a handful of New England dates.
I am also working on booking our second UK tour for spring 2027. That is in its early planning stages. So if anybody in the UK wants to suggest places for us to play, we are actively seeking gigs for late April and early May.
11/07/2026, 17:01 - Finbarre: NOTTINGHAM!
11/07/2026, 17:03 - Finbarre:
Ellia and Jeff, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on Tarot DMs. I will leave you to your conjured cabaret!
11/07/2026, 17:02 - Ellia:
Finbarre, this has been such a fun time chatting with you. I can’t believe a whole hour has gone by. It’s been such a pleasure chatting and talking about tarot with you.
What a perfectly delightful way to have an interview. I don’t know why everybody doesn’t do it this way.
11/07/2026, 17:03 - Jeff:
I so hope that we can meet in person and swap some more stories about tarot and life as well. This has been a joy. Thank you so much.