Soundtracking The Casquette Rose

In a previous post, Soundtracking a Work in Progress, I introduced the soundtrack to my upcoming Louisiana Gothic novel, The Casquette Rose. Now that the novel is finished, I want to revisit this and talk about some more of the songs. Here’s the soundtrack:

Vive la Rose – Nana Mouskouri

Harvester of Eyes – Blue Oyster Cult

Doomsday Blue – Bambie Thug

Bloody Mary – Lady Gaga

Purge the Poison - Marina

Dead Men Don’t Rape – Delilah Bon

My Demon – Stitched Up Heart

The Hanging Tree – Rachel Zegler

Maleficent – Halocene

Time for Tea – Emilie Autumn

Hallelujah – Leonard Cohen

Tango Till They’re Sore – Tom Waits

Bad Romance – Halestorm

See You in Hell – Ad Infinitum

Demons are a Girl’s Best Friend – Infinite Age

Cry Little Sister – Lyric Noel

Bedroom Hymns – Justine’s Mic

Like a Prayer - Dogma

Canal Street Blues – Louis Armstrong and King Oliver

Mama Roux – Dr. John

House of the Rising Sun - Joan Baez

Time for Tea. This song by Emilie Autumn is a wonderful take on female rage at the hands of a patriarchal institution. It’s part of a concept album where women are mistreated at a Victorian asylum (as they were, and as women are still mistreated by the medical profession in various ways today). But it’s not a lament. It’s a scathing anthem of revenge, wherein women take the tools used to harm them, to deny them agency, to strip them of humanity in the name of “science” and turn them into weapons of revolution. The Casquette Rose is a novel of rage, of feminine rage, of queer rage, of the rage of the oppressed who see their oppressors walk freely because wealth and power allowed them to avoid punishment. Even before I started planning a soundtrack, this song played in my head.

Doomsday Blue. This song by a nonbinary Irish singer is probably the song that gave the last casket girl, Catherine-Marie Trichet, a personality. This is a song of a lover’s rage-filled vengeance at being hurt, cast aside, and denied. It is a song wherein sorrow, longing, love, and rage dance, all vying for the lead. In some ways, Catherine-Marie is my antagonist, but in others, she is an equal protagonist, albeit one with a very different set of morals than Danielle does.

Harvester of Eyes. This Blue Oyster Cult song was one that in a previous decade inspired part of a short story I never finished. I can’t even find the manuscript if I wanted to return to it. And I’m saddened by that, but it is the way things are. The song gave me this image of a ritualistic serial killer, and I used the idea of ritualistic murder in this novel as a powerful symbol of rage and revenge.

House of the Rising Sun. Can you have a dark, tragic novel set in New Orleans without reference to this classic song? I chose the Joan Baez version, because I wanted a soulful, feminine voice. There were other versions I considered, but this one carries the weight of “I should’ve listened…” and there are characters who appear and offer Danielle advice along her path, but she doesn’t listen.

And there are other songs that offer similar vibes to those I’ve mentioned, but between this post and its predecessor, I’ve offered a description of the mood and themes of The Casquette Rose. This book, my second Louisiana Gothic/Folk horror novel, releases on 28 October.

-Robin