Teen Gothic

This might be a weird post but I just want to get people's insight on this and to get their opinions of American and Southern Gothic.

I live in Southeast Ohio, which is sadly mostly a place full of radically conservative assholes, but the town I go to college in (Athens) is very different and a great beautiful place. I know when people think of Ohio they think of cornfields, but in the Southeast, you are in the foothills of Appalachia. This was a big coal mining area back in the day and there are remnants of these times everywhere. We even have a huge abandoned gothic-style asylum right next to town. This is also a place where ghosts and legends like that are very prominent. There seems to be about at least one story associated with every old mine, farmhouse, train tunnel, cemetery…

I don't know but the area just feels like it was ripped out of a piece of American Gothic literature. There's this strange sort of creepy romanticism that comes with all the decaying buildings and stories of ghosts. However, this is about as far as the gothic themes go. There is a pretty good music scene in town (albeit not a very big one), but there certainly aren't any goth bands around here. There aren't many people in town who dress goth either. Although if I'm being honest, I don't really associate a lot of contemporary gothic music or dress styles with the feeling that Southeast Ohio evokes. Southern Gothic vibes feel more at home here (which makes sense I guess). I know that Southern Gothic typically is used to describe dark country music or murder folk. Those genres are great but also don't appeal to my post-punk attitude as much.

However, there is one other place I have heard Southern Gothic used occasionally and it is to describe post-punk and college rock bands that came out of Athens, GA (not to be confused with the Athens in Ohio where I go to school). Bands like REM, Pylon, The Connells… they have some interesting dark qualities in their earlier music that, while it is a far cry from gothic rock, still scratches that itch for me and I think fits nicely within the idea of American Gothic on a broader sense.

All of what I am laying out here kind of culminated in my own band when we recorded one of our recent singles. I took a lot of inspiration from the area I live in and from those Athens GA bands as well as some Bauhaus and Cure. And we did end up having some people dub it Southern Gothic. If anyone is interested in hearing it so they can see what I mean then just lmk.

I'm trying to compose a little zine that goes more into depth on Southeast Ohio and how I see it tied into American Gothic. I'd love to get all of your thoughts on this, does it make sense, or am I grasping at straws here?