Wouldn’t it be neat if JK Rowling was a musician that collaborated with a wizard rock band? Wouldn’t it be even neater if she played the accordion? Well fans of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events get just that via Daniel Handler’s participation in the Gothic Archies.

The analogy isn’t as cut as that though. The Gothic Archies aren’t exactly a fandom band in the way most wizard rock acts are. They are a side project of Stephen Merritt of the Magnetic Fields, and he has been fairly active through them since the mid nineties. Fans of the show The Adventures of Pete & Pete may recognize the song Your Long White Fingers from the episode where Older Pete’s friend Teddy sleeps over for a week and hi-jinks ensue. In addition to this Merritt has a number of other side projects, as well, and Handler is often a collaborator. This relationship led to Handler and Merritt discussing the development of a stage show for the his Lemony Snicket book tours. Handler, who plays accordion on the Magnetic Fields’ album “69 Love songs”, suggested that Merritt write music for the audio books, and then tour with him for each book. The music was released as the full album “The Tragic Treasury” in 2006. We are all very much better off for it, as Merritt and Handler produced some of the most weirdly sweet and childlike tunes imaginable.

Stephen Merritt brings his brand of warbly baritone crone combined to the macabre tounge-in-cheek lyrics which fit in well with Daniel Handler’s writing (Merritt has also written an entire musical based on Neil Gaiman’s Coraline). Merritt himself describes the band as Gothic Rock meets Bubblegum Pop, however it is otherwise tough to pin them to a genre. Some tracks are fairly straight forward pop ballads (think Jeff Buckley) or uptempo gothic rock, while some verge on a strange hurdy-gurdy rhythm of French folk or a lone organ grinder. This may be inherent with the combination of the jaunty drone of the accordion and jangle of the ukulele which is often present in many of songs featuring Handler. If you want to slap a wider label on it, it would fit right nicely in with the Baroque Pop/Indie Folk music; music that has vocal and instrumental depth and best suited for intimate live performances, but born straight out of pop sensibility and simplicity.