The Casket Girls return with dreamy goth sophomore album
“The Casket Girls sound like homespun electronic kindred spirits to School of Seven Bells, A Sunny Day in Glasgow, Au Revoir Simone, and other dream-pop groups centered around swirling sisterly vocals.” – SPIN
“The Casket Girls’ brand of goth pop is definitely dark, but it’s a perfect mixture of doom and optimism that keeps you hanging on every word.” – Bust
“Think ’60s girl group, if they wore all-black and performed at seances.” – Nylon
The Casket Girls will return this winter with their sophomore album True Love Kills The Fairy Tale out February 11 on Graveface Records. True Love Kills The Fairy Tale will be available on CD, LP and cassette and you can pre-order now in the Graveface Records Online Store. Earlier this month Nylon premiered the album’s lead off track “Same Side” and said, “Not even lines about swallowing a moth can stop it from being instantly catchy.” eMusic recently featured The Casket Girls as an Artist To Watch and wrote, “This is about as close to a Top 40 record as Graveface Records is ever gonna get, albeit one that’s spiked with strychnine and bittersweet melodies.” The band also released an album trailer, which features three tracks from the upcoming album.
The Casket Girls announced a North American winter tour. The Graveface Road Show will make stops in major cities including New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Washington D.C. and will include performances at Austin’s SXSW Music Festival.
So many pieces of Savannah, GA three-piece The Casket Girls seemed to happen by accident. From their beginning – when electronic sound-shaper Ryan Graveface (Graveface Records, Dreamend, Black Moth Super Rainbow) found sisters Phaedra and Elsa Greene under a tree in one of Savannah’s many squares, playing Autoharp and singing bizarre songs – to the night they composed their sophomore album, True Love Kills the Fairy Tale, under circumstances that fall somewhere between séance and dream state, nearly everything about The Casket Girls seems to have been inspired by some kind of spooky happenstance. But then again, the Greene sisters don’t believe in accidents.
“I dropped off a shit ton of songs to the girls to work on one night,” Graveface says of the genesis of True Love, the follow up to Casket Girls’ critically acclaimed 2012 debut. “I went back to check on their progress, because they weren’t answering their phones. I don’t know if they dropped acid or what, but I walked in and Elsa was sobbing and reciting poetry while Phaedra was just staring straight ahead writing it all down, like catatonic. The next day they dropped off a CD and said, ‘We don’t even know what’s on this. You can throw it in the garbage if you want.’ I sat down and listened all the way through and cried. I was like, ‘Holy shit! They actually wrote a record like that!’ I booked studio time and had them re-record every note just as it was on the demo. They really didn’t remember any of it. Had to learn the songs as if someone else had written them entirely. Very bizarre.”
Phaedra and Elsa had filled the disc with lilting, almost whimsical melodies about chemical hazes and love gone sour like a couple of fucked up Shangri-las, to which Graveface added a bevy of grinding, multi-dimensional psych-rock keys that will be familiar to anyone with a Graveface LP in their collection. The title track speaks like an unknown voice in a lucid dream – perhaps the one that conveyed these songs through the veil in the first place -beckoning, “True love kills the fairy tale… until heart and lungs fail.” It’s this twisted and comforting charm, which set in motion the Graveface-Greene love affair in the first place, that relieves us from fear.
The Casket Girls have gained momentum and a substantial cult following due to the unflagging catchiness of their songwriting and the compelling development of their live stage show. They spent the last year and a half touring in support of BMSR and The Faint before growing into headliners in their own right. Last year, they released a self-titled EP on Record Store Day, and a “cassingle” cassette store day.
The Casket Girls Upcoming Tour Dates
02.14 – Atlanta, GA @ 529
02.15 – Charlotte, NC @ Snug Harbor
02.16 – Washington, DC @ DC9
02.18 – New York, NY @ Mercury Lounge
02.19 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s
02.20 – Allston, MA @ Great Scott
02.21 – Montreal, QC @ Casa Del Popolo
02.22 – Toronto, ON @ The Garrison
02.23 – Grand Rapids, MI @ Founders Brewery, Co.
02.24 – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
02.25 – Minneapolis, MN @ Triple Rock Social Club
02.26 – Fargo, ND @ The Aquarium
02.28 – Missoula, MT @ VFW
03.01 – Seattle, WA @ The Vera Project
03.02 – Portland, OR @ Holocene
03.04 – San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill
03.06 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
03.07 – San Diego, CA @ The Void
03.12 – Austin, TX @ SXSW
03.13 – Austin, TX @ SXSW
03.14 – Austin, TX @ SXSW
03.15 – Austin, TX @ SXSW
03.17 – New Orleans, LA @ The Circle Bar
03.22 – Savannah, GA @ Dollhouse (Graveface Fest 2)
