myth

Did you ever have a bad luck woman on your trail? Did you ever have a bad luck woman on your trail? Always keeps you broke, always keeps you in jail. I used to be happy, (as good Lord), all the time, I used to be happy, (as good Lord), all the time, but soon as I got this woman, (lost) all I can call mine. My bad luck woman is a jinx and a worry too, My bad luck woman is a jinx and a worry too, I can't get rid of her no matter what I do. I tried to make her quit me by callin' another woman's name, I tried to make her quit me by callin' another woman's name, She said, That is all right, he loves me just the same. She keeps a ra't's foot in her hand at night when she goes to sleep, She keeps a ra't's foot in her hand at night when she goes to sleep, to keep (me with) her, so I won't make no midnight creep. My bad luck woman keeps me feelin' blues, My bad luck woman keeps me feelin' blues, I can't get rid of her, she sticks to me like glue. Keep that bad luck woman away with a blend of Spanish moss, black pepper, mullein, sweet sage, vandal root, cypress, cigar tobacco, and a puff of goofer dust cloaked by a swarthy cologne of vetiver, lime, dark musk, caramel accord, and lilac. At first this is very mossy, with a kind of moist vegetation and damp earth shroud. It stayed this way with a lot of throw for the first hour or two, and I wasn't liking it so much. I like the moss/earth smell, but I don't necessarily want to smell like that myself. Now I'd say about 2.5 hours in and there's the caramel! Yay! Now the mossiness is more subdued, although still underneath, and there's the touch of caramel and some other stuff I'm not entirely sure I can identify. Maybe a touch of pepper and tobacco? I'm going to have to do a full test on this one again later to decide completely, as it's very much a morpher on me. Waiting for dry-down I was thinking it was off to the swaps pile, but now I'm wavering.

Leather, golden amber, vanilla orchid, Spanish moss, Oxford clay, and tonka. ETA: the original description on CC.com said, "the female scent has notes of violet and lavender" which was obviously not the case at all, but I wanted to leave that part in this review so it would make more sense, because I was responding to what I thought was in it. I am quite surprised by this scent! Based on the semi-description above [ETA: this refers to the original, incorrect description] I really expected to hate this. [i nabbed it before ANY descriptions were up, natch.] I am the anti-floral girl, the bringer of floral DOOM, the Destroyer of Flowers. I don't smell violet. Or lavender? I can take lavender in certain circumstances but usually BPAL's is too harsh for me, and I don't get a lick of it out of this. And violet is possibly one of my worst florals ever; it always smells like screamingly sharp chemicals. So wut? Instead, this is light, pretty, and slightly sweet. Something about it reminds me of the blends with marshmallow notes in them, because there is a delicate light white sweetness, very clean and pure, running through here like a strand of spun sugar. If I get really close I can in fact smell florals underneath the sweet. So either I'm madly amping something BESIDES florals for a change, or that description is so incomplete as to be nearly useless, or testing this on immediate arrival is causing some weirdness that will shake out as it settles. I dunno. I will come back and edit this review with better info as it develops, because I expected to be putting this one up for swap immediately and instead I can see it needs more in-depth evaluation. For now it is quite light and pretty, almost foody with the sweetness [but not foody, just sugary I guess] and it is making me long to run barefoot through some slightly damp spring grass while wearing a pretty cotton dress. I'm gonna go lie down.

Syrupy fruit, and… hm, I don’t know. I think I’m getting a burnt wood smell… not vetiver, but that smell you get the next day from last night’s campfire. Paired with the fruit… and maybe cola?... it’ a bit odd overall. Almost reminds me of that smell when someone has dropped cigarette butts into a coke that has gone flat [like you might find whilst cleaning up after a party]. This is becoming nauseating, actually. Becomes more strongly stale cigarette butts as it continues to dry. This turned amazingly awful on me, and the final dry-down kind of made me want to retch if I took a big whiff. The only CD proto that was worse than this on me was Tilt-a-Whirl, and together they rank as two of most disgusting smelling perfumes I've ever encountered. I'm sorry; I don't know what I did to this, but it reeeally hates me. I feel bad about being the first review.

Fear of Bats
 A flutter of leather becomes a swarm of buffeting musks, tangled with a white flash of sandalwood and near-inaudible shrieks of eucalyptus and elemi. This was one of my favorite Weenies that I tested at the Dirty South Lunacy last weekend. At first it is mostly a woody incense. The sandalwood in this is the kind that smells like smooth incense, not the scratchy powdery kind. I wasn't sure what elemi was supposed to smell like, so I looked it up, and it is in the frankincense family. So elemi + sandalwood = velvety wood incense. Are bats velvety? Because this smells like velvet feels, smooth and fuzzy and soft on the senses. The leather is in the background at first. As it dried the leather shifted forward and the other notes faded, but even the leather here is kind of fuzzy and soft, more of a suede than a polished leather. I can catch a whiff of eucalyptus when I sniff from the bottle, but I smell nothing of it on my skin, and I never smelled anything that struck me as a musk (merged with the leather?). The final incarnation was lots of leather backed by that woody incense. The YMMV caveat here is that I was testing this alongside other stuff, while in a room full of perfume stink (lol you can smell us coming down the hallway of the hotel our event is held in), and the testing location was on the back of my hand, which is not always the most accurate location and which tends to disappear before a scent gets to the absolute last dry-down stage. I think I might need a bottle of this, but I want to try it again in more isolated circumstances before deciding. It was one of only two Weenies that made me contemplate a bottle though. So, if you skipped this one because you were afraid of the eucalyptus, you might want to rethink it. I stuck my hand under the nose of another attendee, and her response was "oooooh" and when I told her what it was she said "oh I passed over that one because I thought it would smell like Vick's" and immediately went to try it on herself. In eucalyptus' case I think "near-inaudible" is accurate.

Blood red pomegranate juice, gleaming leather, black myrrh, saffron, Spanish juniper, Apple of Cain, and green cognac. There are notes in here that I like, but I was very wary of the pomegranate, because it often goes too candy-like on me. This, however, is one of those scents that is a whole greater than the sum of its parts. I can't say that I can pick out a single individual note. When I inhale, I'd say yes, I smell pom definitely, leather, myrrh, juniper, and apple... but the overall impression is seamless. It's not a jumble of notes that you kind of mash together as you sense them; if you want to think about them individually you instead have to work them apart like teasing threads out of a tightly woven cloth. ETA: this is very rich and heady. It's a pretty powerful scent. If you like scents that are light and delicate, this won't be for you. I like this one. A little surprised about that.

A robust, lewd, and powerful blend of daemonorops resin, red musk, amber incense, galbanum, frankincense, and creaking leather that has dusted with gold and limned with tunda frost. This starts out with a blast of cold pine... that must be the "tundra frost." I love pine and piney-cold blends, so this makes me happy, and explains why I added a second bottle to my order at the last minute tonight. It stays that way for a little while, then turns sweeter. I can't say what this might be... a combo of the amber incense and red musk, perhaps? I like this, too. Sadly, it doesn't stay like this very long, and is now all dragon's blood, all the time. I am not getting leather, resins, incense, whatever. Just the dragon's blood. I knew with it being the first note it would be strong, but I wish it wasn't amping over everything else. Dragon's blood is always very sickly-sour on me. It is that time of the month, so I'm going to let this rest a bit and try it again later. I refuse to believe anything with red musk, amber incense, and leather—despite dragon's blood which is admittedly not my friend—will not smell amazing on me. It has to. Dammit.

Captain Tightpants smells just as good as you always knew he would. At first there's a pretty big hit of leather, but as it settles in the cedar softens the leather, and the vanilla/sassafras sweeten the whole thing. It doesn't smell like rootbeer at all. The drydown is just ruggedly sexy with all the notes merging. The leather is still the one note I can pick out distinctly, but it's not harsh or chemically leather and after it settles down it carries the blend really well without overpowering it. I'm so happy to have nabbed a bottle of this from the etsy; it was the only trunk show blend I really wanted.

Spicy and dry at first. A waft of Big Red gum over the top. Wooden spice cabinet with chewing gum. I don't smell the amber, just the spices and resins. Lots of cinnamon. Too much cinnamon and not enough anything else. Once the cinnamon calms down a bit it is incensy and nice, but it seems similar to one of the past phoenixes I already have, I just can't quite recall which. I like it, because I like resiny spicy blends, but I don't love it because the cinnamon is too forward for my taste and the scent overall is drier than I prefer.

This smells like oudh and butt from the wand, with more of the same on my skin. I don't smell any amber or leather, or any of the other notes really. The oudh is harsh, an olfactory scratchiness, and the castoreum accord is amping over everything else. It's so funky it nearly makes me gag, and it becomes even more horrific as it dries. I finally had to go wash it off, and I try to not do that because I like to let a scent play out. Now that I've done that, in the scent residue that remains I can smell the leather, black musk, frankincense, and patch, which would be a nice scent if this was all it had ever smelled like.

Ugh, this is so so good. Just perfectly what it says on the tin… crisp bright apple, slightly sharp, but mellowed by a cloud of sweet marshmallow. I didn't like Boo, because anything "fabric" does not wear well on my skin and when I tried Boo the perfume it smelled like scratchiness and plastic on me. So, I don't love Boo, but I do love this, and if you didn't like Boo for whatever reason but do like apples and marshmallows you're going to want to try this. I’ve been spraying this all over myself ever since a beautiful angel person I am lucky enough to call friend surprised me with a bottle of it over the weekend. I don't wear the hair glosses in my hair because they break my curls and make me frizzier (I can't do any 'cones in my hair), but I do spray them directly on me. I wish this one lasted longer, though, and I'm going to try rubbing some into my hair at the nape of my neck to see if it sticks around longer on hair than on skin. YUM.

I wasn't sure about this one from reading the notes, but I got lucky. Opium notes can be iffy on me, prone to being heavy/perfumey/powdery, but not here. And this isn't the harsh, sour tobacco a la French Tobacco SN, but the much calmer tobacco leaf note that I like. This is a pale, woody incense of absolute gorgeousness. I love it.

This atmo is GORGEOUS. I usually just get decants of atmos because I have SO MANY, but as soon as I saw the notes of this one I pre-ordered one from DSLE. This was an excellent call on my part. So, so good. The golden amber comes through, sweetened by vanilla, grounded by patch. The cedar and sandalwood add a smooth, woody incense to it. Just stunning. If these sound like your notes then run, don't walk, and get a bottle of this, because I have a feeling down the road it will be as sought after as the L'Estate atmo is... it's in that same incensy-amber vein, but I like it a lot better because it doesn't have the cloying bit of floral to it. I want my house to smell like this always. To me THIS is the smell of opening a BPAL box (because all my BPAL tends to be in this note range, yep). Speaking of which, I keep all my atmos in a cabinet in my office, and every time my accountant comes over and opens it to get checks out he takes a deep inhale and comments on how good it smells. Buy this now.

This is a prototype that was gifted to me. It has a white handwritten prototype label that does not specify the series. This is piney and musky. It starts more piney, with a sweetish top note that reminds me of the sweet pine note that is in the Holly King prototype. Then a masculine musk comes up, and it leans kind of cologne-like, but still with this sweet top note. After 15 or 20 minutes it morphs again briefly and throws an aromatic wood note that I can't quite place, sandalwood or cedar maybe. That seems to disappear fairly quickly, or maybe I just amp the musk over it, because it turns cologne-musk heavy here. I don't mean like a dark musk; it's the kind of clean, almost airy kind, that just makes me think of a classic men's cologne. After a little while that settles back down and I can smell the sweet pine note again. This is kind of a morpher, and makes me think of a well-dressed man in a forest; there is something both refined and wild about it. I wish I didn't amp the musk like I do, because it is the kind that gives me a bit of a headache, so this goes through a phase where it's not really wearable for me, before it turns back into something I can deal with. It didn't do this to me when I first got it, but my skin chemistry seems to have changed over the past few years.

I tested this on the back of my hand at will call. I had the opposite experience from Andra, in that it faded quickly on me, but, the backs of my hands are pretty dry right now so that may be down to where I applied it. It's marshmallow, though. Super sweet sticky marshmallow. It's like a sugar-amped version of Stekkjarstaur... instead of the slightly musky not-over-sweet quality of Stekk's marshmallow, this is full-on in-your-face sugar rush. It's delightful, but I bought two bottles of Stekk so I kind of feel like I don't also need this. But if you missed Stekk...

Most of my atmos tend to be dark and incensy, so I was hoping to add something a little fun and fruity to my collection. I thought this would be good because it didn't have any floral components—florals give me a headache, but the lighter-note sprays that include fruit notes usually seem to have them. Sadly, to me this smells like someone sprayed the room with cherry Chapstick. I'm afraid this one won't be staying with me.

I didn't expect to like this because chocolate, especially milk chocolate (which is what I was assuming a soufflé chocolate would be), does not work on me. Boomslang and Lump of Coal are pretty much my only exceptions to this. But when I applied this, I barely smelled the chocolate. Instead I immediately realized that it smelled exactly like a slightly chocolately version of Mother Ginger. There is some orange (as there was in MG), but mostly it has that distinct, buttercream-ginger feel that Mother Ginger has. As a note ginger is usually either dry/spicy like the powder you'd use in cooking, or it is fiery and planty like the fresh root. This ginger is unique in that it is very vanillic, to the point that the image it evokes in my mind is buttercream frosting. This was exactly the reason why I liked (and have a bottle of) Mother Ginger, and it is why I'm liking this one now. I was afraid the chocolate might amp and turn to first to wet dog and then eventually cardboard, which is what chocolate does on my skin. Instead this one quietly disappeared, leaving only this delicious, rich, vanillic ginger scent. A surprise keeper!

Well, I have to be the voice of dissent here, I'm afraid. This should have been a good one for me... I dig incensy sexy blends, sandalwood, vanilla, oude, and myrrh, but I don't dig Sinus Amoris, nor find anything about it the least bit sexy. It's heavy, powdery, and something in it is sharp and pricks my nose. This smells like a stinky grandma perfume on me. It's nose-curling harsh upon first application, and as it settles in it turns into a heavy powdery scent that is so cloying I feel like I might suffocate when I inhale it. Hours later I get a waft of incensy sandalwood that has finally lost its powder, and that I kind of enjoy. I just can't wait out the overly perfumed grandma in a head shop main phase of this for a tiny aftertaste of something that I only kind of like. Oh well. It's loved enough that I should have no trouble rehoming this bottle.

While I am writing reviews of atmos that I got a decant of and loved so much I was forced to upgrade to a full-sized bottle despite having enough atmo to scent several houses for the rest of my life, I thought I should stop by this thread. Because this is that atmo! (The other one was Revenant Rhythm.) This is just beautiful. When my decant first arrived I did what I do when I smell all my atmo decants, which is twist off the top and pull the sprayer out a little to take a huff from the bottle. At first huff I thought this was going to be too perfumey for me. But I guess I got a little on my hand when I did that, because later on I kept catching whiffs of something lovely and incensey and thinking "what IS that gorgeous scent??" Well I finally figured it out. And this went immediately to my bedside to be used on my pillow. After using it every single night for a couple of weeks I decided this was my One True Bedtime Atmo and got a big bottle. This is a nice soft sweet lavender, not the harsh herbal kind. The sweetness is given an extra boost by the vanilla. The oude and sandalwood give it a soft incense vibe. It's lovely and calming. I have a very hard time falling asleep, and I have been using various calming scents in an attempt to train my dumb brain that when it smells (bedtime smell) it is time to turn off and get some rest. It's probably as close as there will ever be to an atmo version of the Agony of Loss (French lavender, cedar, armoise, white sandalwood, awapuhi, and the smoke of burning love letters). My dear friend Brooke Stant and I are both fans of Agony of Loss, so I gave her my decant of this atmo last time I saw her because I knew she'd like it, too. My will call sold out of this, so I think it was quite popular, as it should be. If you like lavender but don't want a harsh herbal lavender, if you want a sleep scent that is incensey instead of medicinal, this is your jam. It lives on my bedside and I use it every night. Beautiful.

I can't even. This is glorious. So back when BB originally came out I got a decant from a circle, and liked it ok, but it immediately went redonk HTF and expensive and I didn't quite like it enough for the prices it was commanding. I've casually kept a eye out for a good swap or reasonably priced bottle ever since, but never found one. I was pleased when I heard this was coming back, and even moreso when it did it in All the Things. Now, I officially have Too Many ATMOs. For real. I'd need a couple more houses to use up all the atmo I have, even with some recent hard-core destashing. So I pretty much never buy full-sized atmos any more, because I just don't need that much of any one scent. When RR came out I bought a full-size of the bath (bc I do use up my BOs) but only got a 1 oz decant of the atmo. But ever since it arrived it seems to be the only atmo I can use. Every time I need an atmo my hand reaches for RR, as though possessed. So when I placed an order for Snake Charmer gloss at the Post, somehow (that possessed hand again probably) a bottle of RR atmo fell into my cart with it. Puddin has effectively dodged the question of whether the Post RR items would be GC like the perfume is going to be, and I just couldn't take a chance on ever running out of this. Every timeI spray it around my house I just swoon. I told myself I'd sell the decant when my big bottle arrives... but I might not even do that. I can't even describe this. For reasons I can't explain, I love the atmo version more than any of the other RR products; it's just the best incarnation of this scent to me (not that it smells different from the other products, because I've smelled them all together and they all smell the same, just that for whatever reason it makes me happiest smelling it as a home scent rather than on me). It's sweet and golden and beautiful. It doesn't smell hippyish or headshoppy to me (altho I don't dislike those things), it's not a heavy scent (and I have those bc I love them) it's just... I dunno. Glorious. Buy some.

Fruity… I think I’m getting a blast of candy-like fruit as well as realistic bitter citrus rind. The candy note is rolling off as it dries and it’s becoming more perfumey, still with that bitterness that makes me think of orange rind. Becomes more perfume-like and powdery as it continues to dry, and the fruit aspects pretty much disappear. Not really sure what the powdery/perfumey notes could be, but I do often turn florals into powdery perfume, so I'm guessing some kind of floral notes. This one doesn't play well with my chemistry.

The 2007 version of Beaver Moon and Very Pink Surprise Cake are both favorites of mine, so I was pretty excited for strawberry doughnuts after reading the reviews. And at first it was a pretty great strawberry scent and I thought I might need some. But alas, then it dried down, and this bready grainy scent came out. I was wandering around will call trying to think of why it smelled so familiar, and commented it was making me think of a granola bar or something. Someone standing nearby gave my arm a sniff and said "yeah, it smells like a NutriGrain bar." And that was it, exactly. My stepmom always used to have those, the whole grain bar with the fruit filling inside, and once this dries it smells dead on to a NutriGrain bar. Welp, I like to smell like cake, but I don't like the grainy/bready scents, and I definitely don't want to smell like a NutriGrain bar. So this one turned out to not be for me, and I mourn the strawberry doughnut that never was.

I would never have tried this one except that I was frimped a decant of it, so I felt compelled to test it even though it is a laundry list of things known to be terrible on me. From the wand it's very high-pitched, a perfumey white-noise scent, borderline screechy. On my skin I can smell the watery green bamboo, which never works for me. I can also smell a strong floral, and florals are my nemesis. The screechy white noise effect is probably coming from the silk; fabric notes tend to read as a high-pitched airy/dusty musk. Basically everything in this is known to be problematic for me to one degree or another (the only exception being that I like wood generally, except polished woods, and lacquered seems to fall in line with polished). Lots of floral as it dries. It smells like what I used to think perfume smelled like, which is pretty much exactly why I never wore perfume before discovering BPAL. I only put a tiny dab of this on and I still had to go wash it off because it was amping over my two other much more generously applied test spots. So, if you look at this and think, "it's full of my death notes," it probably will be. No surprises here.

Oh. I thought the "rose tint" was going to be from the red musk. Had I realized it meant actual rose I would not have tried this one. Upon initial application I think "man, this smells like deodorant." It's a whiff of something that I think is supposed to evoke metallic gold, but instead it evokes men's deo. THEN I get powdery rose, what I think of as "Grandma's weird chalky sachet she keeps in the underwear drawer" rose. Geranium comes up under that, but I think this is the rose geranium type and not the bourbon geranium that will work on me, because it just adds more cloying powdery floral to the mix. I have a few red musk and geranium blends that I like a lot. Unfortunately this is not that geranium and at no time do I ever get red musk in this. Not at first, not once it dries, not close up or from the throw. Oh, is there vanilla here? I didn't notice. It and the red musk appear to have gone on vacation together. This is pretty tragic on me. It wouldn't go away and I scrubbed with cinnamon clove soap AND applied lotion over it. Rose haters, beware!

Spun sugar and golden peaches. This is basically amazing. I was really expecting it to be somewhat one-dimensional and jolly rancherish... closer to the sugared strawberries bath oil, which is nice but so candy-sweet I can only use it sparingly. But this peach is more realistic, which makes me very happy. It's incredible. Sweet, juicy, peachy, and somehow almost incensey. I mean, not exactly, but there's something about this that is deeper and more complex than I was expecting, like a fine peach liqueur. This smelled so good when I huffed it from the bottle at the con that after fighting the urge to drink it I immediately asked for a second one to be added to my order. Not at all sorry that I did.

Leather, vanilla-infused sandalwood, East Indian patchouli, bitter clove, galbanum, and iron filings. ETA to add the official description. For reference the original CC.com description said this "the male version has musky amber tones." Which... turns out no amber, but now you know why I reference it below. This scent is reminding strongly of something I can't quite put my finger on. It is definitely musky, just barely leaning to lightly powdery. So far there is not much throw, and I have to sniff up close on it. Winding through it I can catch hints of citrus and metal, although it is neither citrus nor metallic. This must be the amber, because I've smelled amber with citrus tones before. It's masculine without being cologney. But this is a working dude, not a polished gentleman. He's got some grease around the edges, but he's huggable... rugged yet friendly. It's very quiet and understated on me so far... I am testing on the day it arrived though, so it might need to catch its breath a bit. It's going to drive me crazy until I think of which scent this is reminding me of. It may be one of the other Steamworks scents, because it does have something of the feel of the ones I've tried out of those, with an oil and metal feel in the background. I need to go sniff some other bottles and I'll come back and update this when I figure it out.