The Casket Girls Go to Their Grave(face)
The drummer and label head talks about the gothic Southern sisters.
The otherworldly music created by The Casket Girls matches their personality perfectly; it’s all simply weird. Sisters Phaedra and Elsa Greene along with Ryan Graveface of Black Moth Super Rainbow share a profound dedication to the study and exploration of supernatural, but this passion and sensitivity feeds their music and draws the band closer together. They come to New Orleans Monday night to play The Circle Bar.
The elusive Green sisters, the Casket Girls themselves, were united with producer and fellow band member, Ryan Graveface, in what he describes as fate in action. Graveface had been searching for leads on a girl group that he could sign to his label, Graveface Records, in 2010 with no luck. It wasn’t until he saw the two sisters sitting under the shade of a tree playing autoharp and reciting dreamy lyrics that he found an act he connected to. He approached the duo with beats and music he had prepared and found that their own personal approach took his music in a surprising direction. In 2012 he recorded The Casket Girls’ first album, Sleepwalking, to see how far the project could go.
The Greenes write the lyrics and Graveface to produce beats and melodies. Graveface doesn’t do much of the lyric writing, but he believes he contributes in his way. “I’ve been working with ESP and astral projection,” he says. “There are a couple of lines on the album that I wrote lyrically, but they don’t know because I projected them. The three of us as a unit are really interested in dreamwriting.”
The Greenes are from Montgomery, Georgia - an “undiscovered New Orleans,” according to Graveface. He surmises that living there inspired their unconventional personalities and creative energies. Before becoming The Casket Girls, the sisters were considered outsider artists, and their work included poetry, lyrics, and a novel they’ve worked on for years. They see The Casket Girls as an opportunity for musical experimentation more than a path to glory. Phaedra and Elsa prefer to hide under the cover of the blonde wigs and dark sunglasses used in promotional photos and live performance.
Graveface admits, “They didn’t want to be doing the live aspect of the project. I twisted their arm into that. Because they were horrified to do it, they needed to hide on stage.” He describes their performance as “totally bizarre. There are crazy projections behind the stage. The girls are doing some of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if I’d seen a band like that live if I would have loved it or hated it.”
The band released their sophomore album, True Love Kills the Fairytale, in February. He feels it is a major improvement from the first work and sees further evolution ahead. “I don’t see their music being stylistically similar after this album,” he says. “I want to get into a more hip-hop direction and start working with independent rappers. I see it going in seven different directions.”
