Music Review: The Pierces – Thirteen Tales of Love and Revenge

When I first listened to The Pierces new album, Thirteen Tales of Love and Revenge, the first thought that went through my mind was that it would make the perfect background music to an amusement park created and run by Tim Burton. Wonderful, whimsical, eclectic, and soaring on the voices of Allison and Catherine Pierce, this is an album I could honestly believe was written during an absinthe fueled quick fire reading of the complete works of Shakespeare, should it have been annotated by Lemony Snicket.

Nearly as entertaining as the music they’ve created, though, is the story the sisters Pierce have fashioned — their own fairy tale, as it were — explaining their lives and music. Found on their Myspace page, their story reads as if the Brothers Grimm were on a bender and wrote it while they had a wicked case of the giggles.

In short, it’s wonderful.

My favorite part is where Catherine was kidnapped at the age of 16 by “a radical born-again, gypsy, dancing troupe that whisked her around the Country on a dilapidated bus.” How can you not spin a wonderful tale out of that?

Whether or not you end up taking my advice and purchasing this album, you should definitely drop by and read the entire story. You should especially do so should you decide to purchase the album because the imagination of the Pierce sisters, and the magical story they’ve created to give life to their music, is just as important as any note on the album. The words on the story are the support structure that holds the Pierces up as they pirouette across your eardrums.

Although I find myself liking the entire album, there are a few songs in particular I find myself replaying over and over on my iPod: the singsong beauty of “Secret,” the stuttering staccato rhythm of “Lies,” and the soaring chorus that the girls achieve on “Go To Heaven” as they bemoan the fact that their heads might explode, and thus send them to heaven, if the object of their desire says even one more of the “cutest things” they’ve ever heard.

I have no qualms about suggesting this album to anyone that loves a good story, especially when it comes wrapped in such a lovely package as this album.