Christopher and Corrine Dollanganger seem like ideal parents in lush Pennsylvania until Christopher’s fatal car accident leaves Corrine and their four children destitute. Seeking assistance, Corrine returns to her childhood home in Virginia, hoping to regain her estranged father’s favor, a man who disapproved of her marriage. At the vast Foxworth Hall, Corrine’s fervently religious mother hides the children in a room connected to the attic, keeping their existence a secret from Corrine’s father. What begins as a temporary solution evolves into three years of confinement filled with malnutrition, murder, and incest among the teenage siblings, initially non-consensual. The novel uses the already provocative elements typical of Southern gothic literature to craft a story resembling a sensationalist pulp fiction.
This narrative resonates particularly with younger audiences because it portrays a gripping journey of youth in transition, trapped by the oppressive, crumbling system their mother escaped, with the ever-present ghost of taboo urging them to defy every rule. Here, spiteful adults and resourceful teenagers create a world where breaking the rules seems less reprehensible given the corrupt nature of those in charge. It’s no surprise that Toronto-based singer-songwriter and visual artist Nicole Bell, known professionally as Nicole Dollanganger, owns two collectible editions of Flowers in the Attic. Like Andrews, Bell’s work is infused with characters from remote areas who engage in forbidden love, often harming themselves as much as they express affection. The siblings, Cathy and Chris, rebel against every norm for their own sake and that of their siblings, persisting even as the adults strive to crush them. Their story is both grotesque and romantic, mirroring Bell’s appreciation for such narratives as dark fantasies while juxtaposing them against the stark, unpredictable realities of today’s world.
The theme of grotesque romance pervades Natural Born Losers, Bell’s first studio album but fifth overall. Her earlier albums were crafted at home, consisting of minimalist songs that showcased her distinct soprano. She explored themes of the flesh, the macabre, and the fringes of youth with a particular fondness for literary and cinematic icons. While her early work might draw comparisons to artists like KatieJane Garside or Gregory and The Hawk, Dollanganger’s lyrical engagement with Southern gothic themes, disordered eating, and violent sexuality sets her apart, making these comparisons largely superficial. Natural Born Losers elevates these elements through more vivid storytelling and dynamic production, aligning her ghostly pop sound with the burgeoning punk-shoegaze scene, perfectly suiting her innocent yet powerful vocal style. Artists like Ethel Cain or Midwife, who have gained cult followings in recent years, owe part of their visibility to Dollanganger’s groundbreaking early work. A decade later, Natural Born Losers remains as impactful and innovative as at its release.
However, Dollanganger’s influence was evident long before Natural Born Losers was released. From her bedroom in the rural outskirts of Toronto, Bell shared her music and art with niche online communities, particularly on Tumblr. This platform allowed her to connect with fans of horror movies, vintage photography, and confessional poetry, fostering a community centered around shared, specific interests. Her collection of antique dolls and rare books, like her editions of Flowers in the Attic, are visual statements that resonate deeply with those who spent their teenage years navigating the darker, more melancholic corners of Tumblr. They form part of the gothic fringes of the “soft grunge” movement, where a predominantly female and LGBTQ+ community cultivated an aesthetic that revived and reinterpreted alternative fashion trends from the 1990s during the Obama era.
I was deeply engaged with this scene. My early 2010s memories of soft grunge include listening to Lana Del Rey and the 1975 while channeling Sky Ferreira’s style. This movement served as a melting pot for alternative femininities, drawing on imagery linked to a rawer, more genuine past. Homages to Courtney Love and readings of Sylvia Plath were staples. Bell’s posts, often more intense than the broader soft grunge trend, were a perfect fit for her music and visuals as Nicole Dollanganger. Within this subculture’s wide umbrella, we explored alternative self-images and confronted taboos surrounding body horror, violence, sexuality, and substance use, just as fervently as we engaged with emerging indie-pop music. It was often a raw, self-directed exploration of our own perceived flaws, but it provided a crucial outlet for expression.
When Natural Born Losers reached me, I was just starting college, recently out as a gay man, and living authentically for the first time. Yet, I was also deeply fearful of men. Before I even fully understood my own differences, I sensed that other men could detect them. Concealing these differences felt crucial to my survival; even after coming out, men remained a source of fear. I was terrified of potential violence from both hateful straight men and from queer men who might claim to love me. This period was marked by a rising awareness of gender-based violence, discussed daily even before the #MeToo movement gained momentum, coupled with my own internalized homophobia.
Despite my fears, my desires were undeniable. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t yearn for relationships with men, nor could I ignore my longing for a man who would daringly break all societal rules for me, even if it meant risking serious harm. Natural Born Losers provided a framework to understand these intertwined fears and desires. I was prepared to face pain to fulfill my needs; I might have even desired it. The lyrics of “Mean” encapsulate my feelings perfectly: “I like it when it hurts like hell / There’s nothing you can do to me / I wouldn’t do to myself.” Then there’s “American Tradition,” where Bell sings about bleeding out for her lover: “We play the knife game on the table / I bleed to death, it doesn’t matter / ‘Cause my baby, he’s still the winner.” If this was what being with men entailed, I was ready to embrace it.
Apart from the shocking content of Natural Born Losers‘ lyrics, the album’s sound was a major draw. While Dollanganger’s previous albums possessed a unique beauty, the gritty, slowcore style of Natural Born Losers intensifies Bell’s ethereal vocals with eerie guitar echoes and waves that have become a hallmark of her work with collaborators Ryan Goodman and, on “Angels of Porn II,” Matt Tomasi. In her teenage years, Bell was a regular at Ontario hardcore shows, and although her early material might not sound overtly hardcore, the themes and atmosphere are similar to what you’d find at a quality underground gig. Hardcore isn’t just a music genre; it’s an attitude. It’s about challenging norms, addressing taboos through the use of violence for redemptive purposes, and experimenting with guitars in unconventional ways. All of these elements are present in Natural Born Losers, though they manifest differently than at a typical fast-paced hardcore show. The attitude and atmosphere are compatible, and it helps that the album’s limited personnel had ties to hardcore, eventually leading Dollanganger to collaborations with bands like Code Orange and 100 gecs. Tomasi himself was active in various Ontario hardcore and shoegaze bands during a time when the punk-shoegaze crossover was becoming a defining movement (consider bands like Nothing, Cloakroom, and Whirr).
The creative chemistry between Bell and her collaborators stems from their understanding that hardcore, as an aesthetic movement, is adaptable. Their approach is electrifying yet understated; the guitars on “American Tradition” cry out, but the rhythm is simple, repetitive, and gives way when it’s time for Bell to lead. On “You’re So Cool,” the guitars either wail above or moan below while the drums mostly keep time. “White Trashing” primarily maintains the acoustic melody as its foundation, but bursts of electric guitar cut sharply through. As with her earlier bedroom recordings, Bell remains the focal point, but the addition of heavier production drapes each lyric with a metallic weight, lending extra sincerity to every word. The relative simplicity of the arrangements makes each song feel as if it’s being performed by a spirit confined to a dark, damp basement, using whatever tools are at hand to convey her haunting songs.
In the years following “Angels of Porn II,” Tomasi has evolved from a hidden gem in the Ontario DIY scene to a prominent figure in his own right, producing Ethel Cain’s Preacher’s Daughter while opening her shows with his own shoegaze band, 9Million. I firmly believe that Preacher’s Daughter would not have achieved its iconic status without Natural Born Losers paving the way, not least because of Tomasi’s significant contributions to one of its standout tracks. Natural Born Losers is less diaristic than Bell’s earlier works like Curdled Milk, Flowers of Flesh and Blood, Ode to Dawn Wiener: Embarrassing Love Songs, and Observatory Mansions, all of which were recorded at home during and just after a long period of bed rest required for recovery from eating disorders, influencing songs as confrontational and devastating as “Please Eat.” “Dog Teeth” focuses on Bell’s experience of being raped; “Angels of Porn II,” originally released on 2014’s Observatory Mansions, intertwines bulimia, digital penetration, and Satan across nearly four minutes of punishing guitar and lullabies, making it one of the most distressing songs I’ve ever heard. However, it’s one of relatively few confessional songs on Natural Born Losers.
Preacher’s Daughter is anything but confessional; it’s a concept album about a fictional character who breaks the rules of her time and pays the ultimate price for it. Both Cain’s breakthrough debut and Natural Born Losers share a focus on religion, sexuality, and transgression, with imagery drawn from film and literature, from Natural Born Killers to Gummo. Dollanganger has continued this theme up to 2023’s Married in Mount Airy, which reduces but does not eliminate graphic lyricism in favor of more reflection on the decaying vision of the American Dream, exemplified by the now-dilapidated honeymoon resorts of the Poconos. Ethel Cain’s follow-up to Preacher’s Daughter is its prequel, Willoughby Tucker, I Will Always Love You, another over-the-top, slow-paced exploration of teenage romance under harsh conditions. Writing and performing about personal experiences with these issues is one thing; amplifying those experiences into fantastical representations continues the tradition of V.C. Andrews. Enveloped in stark, contemplative production that ranges from dark folk to doom, the works of Dollanganger and Cain magnify taboos without sugarcoating transgression, illuminating the depraved underbelly that supports our social norms while reclaiming nonmetropolitan stories and soundscapes for purposes that hold greater liberating potential.
In its era, Natural Born Losers might have been seen as the gritty alternative to major-label transgressors like Halsey or Melanie Martinez, making them appear more palatable. Critics from Pitchfork to Spin approached the album with cautious approval, acknowledging Dollanganger’s distinct departure from mainstream dark pop, but uncertain if the project offered more than minimalist rock production and provocative lyrics. Pitchfork was even harsher towards Ethel Cain’s Preacher’s Daughter. To be fair, Cain’s album is much longer than Dollanganger’s, though it contains a variety of songs for those willing to delve deeper. Both are narrative-driven songwriters, and the production is crafted to electrify without overshadowing.
Natural Born Losers‘ extended reflections on execution and on loving a truly wicked boy flirt so closely with teenage fantasies of love against all odds, of revenge, and of transcending physicality that they seem designed to disturb to the point of emotional regression. Preacher’s Daughter displays similar emotions in a concept-album format spread over even longer tracks. I’d argue that these neutral-to-negative critical responses stem from a combination of the raw emotional exposure and the idiosyncrasies of their production, designed more to stun and awe rather than to fit into a tradition. Both albums are unrestrained with their genre influences for perfectly valid reasons, and if the production lacks sufficient depth or variety, it’s to provide space for the songwriters, whose eagerness to push boundaries with emotionally charged and violent lyrics demonstrates a keen interest in making a statement at any cost.
Natural Born Losers also garnered significant attention due to a major endorsement from Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes, after she and Bell performed together with Lana Del Rey. Boucher and her then-partner Jaime Brooks co-founded a label, Eerie Organization, specifically to facilitate a proper release for Natural Born Losers, and having one of the world’s most talked-about alternative pop artists backing Bell’s project certainly didn’t hurt. Eerie Organization itself never expanded into a large-scale operation; after Natural Born Losers, the label handled Canada-specific visuals for Grimes’ Art Angels and released Bell’s 2018 album, Heart Shaped Bed, before becoming inactive.
What truly set Natural Born Losers apart and cemented its status as a cult favorite was only fully appreciated by those who had been following Bell for years, but its influence has become increasingly evident over the past decade, as artists like Ethel Cain have sold out their tours and Dollanganger herself has made waves at Roadburn, the Coachella of the alternative heavy music scene. Provocative lyrics, rural settings, and cascading guitars may not conform to the norms of traditional pop success, but they more accurately reflect the intense internal contradictions we navigate daily to maintain our composure in a violent, stratified society. When listening to Natural Born Losers, you can surrender to these contradictions, explore them to their extremes, and focus on the pleasure and pain associated with contemporary desires. It’s never simple, but it’s always worthwhile.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: A previous version of the story listed Matt Tomasi as an executive producer on the album. Ryan Goodman was Bell’s primary collaborator on the album; Tomasi worked on “Angels of Porn II” only.]
Devon Chodzin is a Pittsburgh-based critic and urban planner with bylines at Aquarium Drunkard, Stereogum, Bandcamp Daily and more. He can be found on social media, sometimes.
