Romanticizing the past is nothing new, especially when it comes to spaces and places that time somehow forgot. But the divide between real and fantasy running parallel to before and after is blurred beyond recognition in the pandemic age, and now Dust Bowl Faeries are taking us back to a place we long to return, without truly knowing if we were ever there in the first place. The New York State dark-vaudeville goth cabaret collective unveiled their time-portal EP Carnival Dust last week (January 24), a mystic twirl through the senses and a frenzied dance through the chaotic, shape-shifting corridors of post-apocalyptic memory.
“Carnival Dust is a sonic re-creation of an empty cabaret covered in dust, closed and forgotten but still alive in people’s memories,” says Ryder Cooley, Dust Bowl Faeries’ ringleader, singer, songwriter, and accordion player. “You can sneak in at night and still hear the music playing from a player piano or an old crank organ; the accordion, the singing saw… characters come to life one by one, the tattooed man, the bearded lady, some burlesque performers and aerialists, a carousel starts spinning, wooden horses begin to bob up and down on their poles, is it a dream, or is it real?”
Fueling this sense of what was and what wasn’t, echoing through the ghosts of the past few years and the faded harmonic laughter of crowds once assembled, the EP was recorded at Helsinki Hudson, the Hudson Valley venue that’s been shuttered since the pandemic first cast its silent grip. The empty nightclub only enhanced Carnival Dust’s thematic reach and augmentation of vaudevillian decadence.
“As we recorded, we remembered all the wonderful shows that we played there and all the concerts we listened to and danced at in the before times,” Cooley adds. “Those aural memories are part of these songs. There are some references to political corruption and social chaos embedded in the songs, which bring them into the present tense. There are also some mystical departures, which are timeless, transcendent, and offer a respite from the overall sinister tone of the music.”
Relive them all for the very first time with Carnival Dust below, as well as EP standout “The Changeling”, via time-stained lyric video.
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