PHOTOS: RICHIE DOWNS | Ever feel out of the loop? (I know, us too.) Yes, it seems there’s something going down at record stores tomorrow, April 19, but nobody tells us a damn thing. It’s weird. But I tell you what, we hate crowds. And lines.
Know who hates crowds too? Savannah, GA’s The Casket Girls, that’s who. The lovely women of spooky shadows with an eerily catchy soundtrack to match made their way through Washington, DC recently, and with a chill in the air and ice on the stilettos, wound their way down the stairs of DC’s Som Records to join us for a hang. And a record rummage.
“My sister and I grew up in a large, dusty clutter of hallways and staircases. Playground and prison just the same, we didn’t leave the grounds much. When you live in the middle of nowhere, nowhere is your destination and your return.”
“We seemed to evade any vague adult supervision that might have made faint gestures towards securing some sense of order in our lives, and were left thoroughly content wandering about the self-made tunnels and bridges of our mind’s eye. Hoping to connect with the other worldly—in search of something more.
We were scared of the attic. We were told it was dangerous, and never to lower the ladder. Though for years we abided, we knew that one day the bravery would rise in our chests, tiny hearts pounding, breath controlled, my sister shushing me with only her glance: the ladder would be lowered. And as we believed in destiny from a very young age, we felt we had no choice in matters, we were only following our hearts up the seemingly loudest steps we had ever walked in our lives, as our aunt made tea in the kitchen below.
My sister pushed the square piece of termite rotten wood out of its place and up into “the other side.” It was dark. We stood very close to one another for seemingly an eternity without movement, and without plan.
I finally sat down, and it was Phaedra that set out in search of light. Suddenly, all in a moment, there was light and, simultaneously, a VERY loud indiscernible noise. Phaedra grabbed an ornate cardboard square, and I, a butterfly pressed between glass inside a broken frame—we held these treasures close as we madly dashed back down the ladder, down two flights of stairs and out the side door into the garden, which we called “heaven,” at the time.
The noise from the attic was never identified and we never returned, but we spent hours theorizing what sort of hidden message we had missed by fleeing the scene. We cherished that ornate cardboard square, containing two ebony circles with ornate centers for the next few years, before ever knowing the music it contained, or really knowing music at all. It was Bach. And we loved it.
How we got from not knowing what a record was, to starting a band with Ryan who owns a record store and record label in Savannah, in our mind’s eye, can only be destiny.
If you live near, come visit his record store! Graveface Records and Curiosities. It’s the best. Life is strange.”
—Elsa
