After a bit of a holiday hiatus, catch up with us for a casual hang on Heather’s couch, in which we touch on the experience of being goth in Kauai, Hawaiian Christmas water grannies, the winter Covid resurgence, Gothanukkah (yes, it’s a thing, more on that later), Icelandic introvert Christmas, and the world exploding with emotions over Netflix’s Wednesday series (and more on that later, too). And as usual, interruptions by cats.

We’re back to discuss the second half of Rolling Stone’s “The 50 Best Goth Songs of All Time,” now opining about selections 25-1. Heather and Vesta become more likely to agree with each other and the article’s author in the second half…until we get to number one. Also featuring a She Wants Revenge impression no one asked for.

Rolling Stone recently published an article entitled “The 50 Best Goth Songs of All Time” written by Andi Harriman, and of course we have opinions. The list is an interesting combinations of basic staples and odd deep cuts, and we in no way claim authority in this divisive and subjective topic, but that doesn’t mean we won’t talk it to death. Embark down a journey of opinions as we explore selections 50-25, of course with anecdotes along the way, as well as a surprise phone appearance by Todd Malkin!

One musician named Davey was simply not enough, so we now welcome Davey Ferchow of the bands Dry Wedding and Swampland, zooming in from Portland. After airing some SoCal grievances, this pod full of poets gets into discussing how a sense of self can emerge from trauma, healthily and wholesomely acknowledging an addictive personality, disagreements about Nick Cave and his many iterations, and the rite of passage that is surviving a Swans concert. We must give Davey credit for not flipping a table and rage-quitting the zoom over our ignorance of Scott Walker. Look out for Dry Wedding’s upcoming west coast tour in March of 2023.

We’re here with our first minisode, in honor of Halloween! Vesta and Heather chat about how the goth community embraces the Halloween season, the time when the rest of society meets us where we already live. We air some grumpy vibes about haunts, conventions, costumes, and amateur nights, but also dig up a lifetime of reverence for the childhood experiences that led us to where we are today. Happy spooky season, wherever the fuck that phrase suddenly came from.

Charlotte Anderson is Vesta’s fairygothchild, and also affectionately known as Charlotte’s Goth Sometimes, Normcore Charlotte, and an “inside goth.” Our bubbly Canadian discusses neurodivergence and being bullied in school, a traumatic death in the family that led her away from the Anglican church and into the so-called darkness, and how she focuses on building community through her daywalker job at Lionsgate, which leads to both an argument about Twilight, and also a reverence for communities of all kinds. Charlotte’s goth streak may be hidden under blue jeans and a love for Beyonce, but it is most certainly lurking beneath.

This is part 2 of Poe’s Big Tiddy Goth Girls, which gives a more in depth look at the literary trope of dead women fetishized by male narrators. It is debatable whether this has a direct effect on the goth subculture any more than it does on western culture as a whole, but either way it is an undeniable building block of the Gothic literature where we find our roots. Ophelia and Desdemona, Annabelle Lee and Lenore, Elizabeth Frankenstein, Sybil Vane, all the way up through Laura Palmer and Nick Cave’s many lyrical deaths and beyond, this trope lives on (see what we did there) well into contemporary art and pop culture. Navigating this narrative from a feminist perspective is no small task, and it won’t end here.

Playlists discussed:

Imagined Dead Girls & Living Sad Girls

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/057ejY77DrLJJZoaOp2ig5?si=db31831ff3dc475b

Dandies & Dead Boys

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jRZfqs7yiOaMLWE1rpYmo?si=903bdcd507c54ea7

Heather and Vesta chat about how the goth subculture is represented in mainstream media, interpreted by those outside the community, and often therefore fetishized. We discuss whether we tend to fetishize youth within the community, what happens when our aesthetic is decontextualized and sometimes appropriated, and why this podcast will never tag #gothgirl (ugh what a conundrum, we just did). We leave you with a cliffhanger of the manic pixie dead girl trope, which we will get into more in depth on our next guest-free episode.

Tonight we are graced by the presence of Davey Havok, whom you may recognize from such bands as AFI and Blaqk Audio, as well as Dreamcar and XTRMST. Outside of his very successful music projects, we know Davey as a staple on the dance floor in the LA goth community. We jump right into discussing whether the label “goth” is diminutive, whether labels in general are anything more than lazy journalism, the experience of growing up as a casualty of Catholicism and rejecting organized religion, and coming up in the hardcore punk scene which then gave way to a more poetic, less aggressive goth side. Davey tells us the nerve wracking tale of playing The Cure in front of The Cure, discusses his convictions around veganism and the straightedge lifestyle, the meaning of vice, the blurry boundaries between artist and fans in our community and how this can still result in problematic limerence, and symbolic aesthetics in an age of decontextualization. You can find Blaqk Audio’s latest album - Trop d’amour - wherever you found this podcast, and if in LA you can see them at the Fonda this Saturday 9/24.

Today we are chatting with SoCal deathrock enigma Morticia Batz, founder of online publication GothHausLA.com. But there is more to her than just deathrock, rollerderby, and band interviews. Coming from the LA County foster system and homelessness, to giving TedX talks and getting her Psychology and Indigenous People’s Studies degree at UCSD, she is determined to use everything she’s been through to help others through activism, nonprofit work, research, and changing public policy. One thing is clear: community comes first and foremost to this goth-adopted bat. And someday soon she will answer the question: does Jonny Slut like water?