A concept album devoted to Marie Curie? Um, sure. Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris wrote these songs back in 2017 during a residency at the Crosshatch Center for Art and Ecology. Then they went and recorded Spells + Rituals, which was released in 2019.

Charming Disaster Our Lady of Radium (self-released)

Then, pandemic. And so we have yet another project that owes itself to global suffering, an irony that is surely not lost on a duo that adores murder ballads, Edward Gorey and Tim Burton. These meticulously-crafted songs weave in and out of a cabaret consciousness. Bisker and Morris's intertwined harmonies are in full effect, as is the way the duo seemingly finishes each other's sentences through the verses.

Marie Curie's life was a hot mess. The songs on this album are not intended to serve as a biography, but rather short sketches. What does come across is a melancholy that might well have been felt by a woman who loved many men but received very little respect from the men of science in her day.

And yes, dying as a result of the research that made her so famous is yet another subtext. But even without the Curie connection, these songs are spectacular creations that speak much more broadly to the human condition--in particular the final human condition. Charming Disaster delves into many dark places, but these songs end up more affirming than depressing. In the end, we are all human after all.

Jon Worley