Open Caskets - VARIOUS ARTISTS
Blood Makes Noise: INTERVIEW & PREMIERE
Open Caskets has expanded beyond the page with a seven-song soundtrack inspired by the graphic novel’s characters, stories, and strange worlds. Music created by members of the Open Caskets creative team and their collaborators, the record works as a musical companion to the book, with several songs written as they exist within the stories themselves.
Open Caskets is a dark, surreal graphic novel created by Shaun Simon (Pencey Prep) and Neil Sabatino (Pencey Prep, Fairmont, Please Be Careful). Simon is best known as a founding member of Pencey Prep and for his comics work, including books done with Gerard and Mikey Way of My Chemical Romance The Umbrella Academy: You Look Like Death, The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys, and Collapser. Sabatino is a longtime indie-rock musician, visual artist, and founder of Mint 400 Records. The book also features contributions from Simon’s son Jack Simon (The Mercys), who co-wrote two stories.
Jack takes a central role on the soundtrack, writing, singing, and playing acoustic guitar on “Half A World Away” and “Coffee Black,” while performing vocals and piano on “Don Cicada” and “Eternity.” His songs explore the personalities and inner lives of the book’s characters with the feel of an offbeat indie-rock musical. “Eternity” represents the song written by a character who becomes famous, while “Don Cicada” is a crooning nightclub cicada that sings to an audience in the book.
Shaun wrote the underlying music for “Open Caskets,” with Jack providing the lyrics, and also plays keyboards on two tracks. The backing group, The Ant Orchestra, features Neil Sabatino on bass and guitar, Enid Sabatino on backing vocals & flute, and Shaun Simon on piano and keyboards, Ty Fletcher (The Mercys) on backing vocals & guitar, with Christian Kisala (Fairmont, The Bitter Chills, Please Be Careful) playing drums throughout.
Neil Sabatino contributes two songs under his own name. “Happy Friends Theme Song,” featuring vocals from Neil and his daughter Enid, and embraces the chaotic sounds of the Happy Friends puppets. “I Am A Prisoner To It,” co-written with Enid and featuring her flute, moves into atmospheric trip-hop influenced by Portishead and Tortoise.
The result is a varied indie-rock soundtrack that expands the world of Open Caskets through the voices of its characters and creators.