In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
The stories in Julia Elliott‘s collection Hellions are marvelously diverse and divine magic from everyday lives.
LitHub wrote of the book:
“Jeff VanderMeer called Elliott an Angela Carter for our times, and he’s absolutely right. Elliott’s fiction blends folklore and fairy tale, reality and strangeness, the surreal and the mundane to make dazzling mobiles of oddity―and her new collection is shaping up to be her most curious to date. From medieval convents to small Southern towns, Elliott’s protagonists make her strange worlds seem vibrantly real.”
In her own words, here is Julia Elliott‘s Book Notes music playlist for her story collection Hellions:
Hellions is a genre-bending collection of stories that ranges like a feral dog from medieval Europe to the heart of the contemporary South and on into strange, tech-mediated futures. Blending folklore, fairy tales, Southern Gothic, and horror, Hellions jumps from the occult to the comic, from the horrific to the wondrous, reveling in the collision of the familiar with the wildly surreal.
Each story in my book captures the special essence of the “hellion,” a word I heard often while growing up in rural South Carolina. A hellion is a rebellious, impish creature—often a child—who disrupts the norm and sometimes causes all hell to break loose. As the word implies, hellions may hail from the underworld and have the Devil in them, but they are also earthbound characters who long for otherworldly. While some tales explore the uncanniness of girlhood, others tap into the archetypal potency of the witch, women deemed hellions by society—odd, estranged beings who lurk along the borders between the real and the fantastic.
For this playlist, I chose a song for each story that I hope captures its particular evocation of the “hellion,” whether pitchy and carnal or ethereal and sublime. I also sprinkled in four unsettling tracks from Broadcast’s score for the horror film Berberian Sound Studio (Peter Strickland, 2012), which follows the increasingly nightmarish experience of a British sound engineer as he works on an Italian horror film evocative of 1970s giallo.
“The Four Horsemen” by Aphrodite’s Child
In my story “Bride,” a nun works on a mystic manuscript in a plague-stricken medieval convent. As freak blizzards dump snow upon the cloister in April, Wilda develops an intense friendship with Aoife, a “wild” girl who “has no Latin.” Wilda’s visions become stranger, more erotic and apocalyptic, an energy captured by “The Four Horsemen,” the opening track of Aphrodite’s Child’s 1972 psychedelic album 666, a trippy take on the Book of Revelation cooked up by Vangelis and Demis Roussos.
“Mark of the Devil” by Broadcast
“Fire” by Komeda
“Mark of the Devil,” an ominous swell from Broadcast’s score for Berberian Sound Studio, preludes “Fire,” a sultry meditation on love as hellfire and sunshine from Swedish band Komeda (named for the composer of Rosemary’s Baby). This sequence befits “Hellion,” the title story of my book. Butter, a classic hellion, is a go-cart-driving, dare-deviling, cigarette-smoking twelve-year-old girl who keeps a pet alligator, but she is also a serious soul who explores the mysteries of the swamp around her, a girl who pines for the wondrous.
“Here Comes the Sabbath, There Goes the Cross” by Broadcast
“She Brings the Rain” by Can
“Here Comes the Sabbath, There Goes the Cross” highlights the demonic misogyny that haunts the sound designer in Berberian Sound Studio. In “She Brings the Rain,” Malcolm Mooney, original vocalist for Krautrock icon Can, croons about the restorative effects of a woman who creates “magic mushrooms out of dreams,” apt for my story “Erl King,” in which a young woman resists the tyranny of a shape-shifting older professor as she develops her own sorceress skills. The “Wild Professor,” known for seducing students with promises of initiating them into the mysteries of occult poetry, relies on a constant stream of youthful women to retain his vitality.
“American Metaphysical Circus” by The United States of America
In “The Maiden,” a group of small-town teens discover the transcendent magic of an outcast girl named Cujo who hexes kids by performing supernatural trampoline stunts. “American Metaphysical Circus” (by late 60s psychedelic band The United States of America) begins with a description of an unearthly act of dare-deviltry in keeping with Cujo’s tricks: “At precisely eight-o-five / Doctor Frederick von Meier / Will attempt his famous dive / Through a solid sheet of luminescent fire.” Listeners who descend into the increasingly hallucinogenic lyrics and melodies are warned by the refrain, “The cost of one admission is your mind.”
“The Fifth Claw” by Broadcast
“Suspiria – Originale” by Goblin
In “Flying,” a medieval man chases a woodland enchantress through a primeval forest, a woman both grotesque and gorgeous, seductive and menacing. “The Fifth Claw,” another Berberian Sound Studio offering from Broadcast, captures a witch in the throes of some unholy transformation, apt audio for the lavish birth scene central to “Flying.” Prog legend Goblin’s theme song from the 1977 giallo classic Suspiria, which evokes the primordial powers of the immortal Mother Suspiriorum, provides the perfect incantation.
“Amphibian” by Björk
In “Arcadia Lakes,” an outcast sixteen-year-old girl bonds with a strange aquatic creature that lives in the silt of a toxic pond behind her suburban house. “Amphibian,” a lush siren song in which Björk’s voice becomes a creature unto itself, captures the essence of the tentacular, membranous, bioluminescent organism that appears on dark, new moon nights.
“Chuncho” by Yma Sumac
“Chuncho,” by “Peruvian songbird” Yma Sumac, showcases the astonishing vocal range of the midcentury exotica singer and composer. “Chuncho,” translated as “The Forest Creatures,” evokes the bewitching nature of the woods in my story “The Mothers,” set in a feminist art colony in the North Carolina mountains. In this tale, a group of moms contends with the supernatural talents their children pick up from a pair of mysterious orphans who live in the forest.
“Wax and Wane” by Cocteau Twins
Set in the near future, “Moon Witch, Moon Witch” follows a “simplicity consultant” who helps clients revamp their cluttered homes into minimalist showplaces. Bored by her sterile job, the protagonist seeks primal thrills through a “Time Travel Dating” app that offers romance in a prehistoric village where she reigns as the matriarchal Moon Witch. In “Wax and Wane,” dream pop pioneers Cocteau Twins summon lunar fluctuations with hypnotic vocals and swirling guitar riffs.
“It’s Time to Go” by Buddy Fo & His Group
In “Another Frequency,” a UPS driver and audiophile experiences disenchantment with the music she once loved, every last song and symphony going “dead like a tooth with a traumatized root.” Upon discovering entrancing melodies broadcast by a pirate radio station, she roams the woods searching for sounds that seem to come from another dimension. Though the story brims with references ranging from pop to avant-garde classical, “It’s Time to Go,” a melancholy tune by 1960s Hawaiian quintet Buddy Fo & His Group, best voices Viv’s desire to escape the world of mud, flesh, and sorrow.
“A Goblin” by Broadcast
“Papercuts” by Broadcast
After Sylvia eats a strange egg in “The Gricklemare,” her ex-boyfriend returns along with a small, fleshy animal that skitters around her isolated mountain cabin. Sylvia reckons with her past as the nature of this haunting becomes clearer. While Broadcast’s “Goblin” conjures the physical nature of the poltergeist that vexes her, “Papercuts,” which features Trish Keenen’s dreamy vocals, wistfully captures Sylvia’s relationship woes. Of all the genres used to describe Broadcast, “hauntology” fits this story best.
“Baboon’s Blood” by Art Zoyd
In “All the Other Demons,” an adolescent girl mired in the languor of a South Carolina summer finds unexpected power as her family obsesses over the horror film The Exorcist. Inspired by Regan, who levitates “serenely, her arms spread wide, performing a feat commonly attributed to saints,” the twelve-year old narrator glimpses mysterious possibilities beyond the stultifying confines of her family and rural neighborhood. Though her dreams of escape are accompanied by 80s metal ballads that befit her age and era, “Baboon’s Blood” a 1987 track from French avant-prog band Art Zoyd, better dramatizes the scope of her longing.
Julia Elliott is the author of the story collection The Wilds, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and the novel The New and Improved Romie Futch (both from Tin House). Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Tin House, Conjunctions, and the New York Times. She has won a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, and her stories have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. She teaches English and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina and lives in Columbia with her husband, daughter, and five hens.