The Handsome Family
Honey Moon
(Carrot Top, 2009)
The Handsome Family plays country music, but don’t expect them to appear at the Grand Ole Opry anytime soon. While their music is grown in the mulch of the old-time ballads and mountain folk songs that are the foundation of the country genre, they have an arty cosmopolitan aura that’s all their own. They’re mining a vein that is seldom prospected by today’s country artists, with the possible exception of bluegrass bands.
The Handsome Family is Brett Sparks, composer, singer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer, and his wife and songwriting partner Rennie Sparks, lyricist, Autoharp player, and harmony vocalist. The music is country, but it tends to be lethargic. It glories in solemn, measured tempos and subject matter that tends toward life’s other side, as Hank, Sr. once sang: Heartbreak, depression, decay, and implied ecological disasters abound. Brett’s baritone is so low it sounds like the earth rumbling, and it gives every tune an oracular presence that’s amply backed up by Rennie’s mystifying lyrics, which meld poetic impulses and everyday language with an effortless grace.
True to its title, Honey Moon is a romantic album, possibly the most lyrically upbeat set of tunes the Handsome Family has even given us. They haven’t entirely banished the darkness, but there are more shades of gray this time, shadows that flicker playfully at the corner of your eyes, or perhaps at the edge of the sonic landscape, cavorting with the June bugs, minnows, moths, birds, bees, and feral cats that waltz through these 12 bipolar odes.
The album opens with “Linger, Let Me Linger”, a traditional sentiment of a forlorn beau for his fair lady, delivered with the Handsome’s usual oblique lyrical approach. Brett sings, “We are like crickets in the spring, calling out from under our stones,” while ’50s R&B piano triplets march through the background, followed by a moaning funereal chorus. His processed guitar solo heightens the retro feel. “Wild Wood” is a subdued Waylon Jennings stomp; a crazed, primal love song full of stygian humor. The duo sings, “You can growl at me or hit me with a rock / When you want to say ‘I love you’ in the dark.” “Wildwood Flower” it ain’t. Brett whistles carelessly to introduce “The Loneliness of Magnets”, a ’40s-style swing tune with beautifully uncoiling jazz guitar. Brett slides up to his fractured, almost falsetto upper register to give the song a suitably desperate vibe. “Love Is Like” piles up images of disaster and decay over a throbbing drumbeat as simple as the beating of a tortured heart. No chorus, no release, just a slow sullen march to the edge of a crumbling cliff.
Occasionally, the Handsomes do manage to come through with a fairly straightforward love song, although Brett’s singing and the deliberate tempos always imply the invisible worm that rests in the heart of the rose, to plagiarize a phrase. The sighing pedal steel on “Little Sparrows” makes it sound like a mainstream country tune, and Brett and Rennie sing a harmonic lead in the tradition of Conway and Loretta and George and Tammy. Brett’s full, chiming electric guitar gives “June Bugs” a lovely, expansive feel that complements Rennie’s startling images: “I want to kiss you in thickets and dripping wet glades / As the stars rub against the dark skin of space.” The song is a quiet portrayal of a rain-dappled, perfume-thick spring evening, when the universe makes love to itself in an orgiastic frenzy of new blossoms and pheromone besotted wildlife. “The Winding Corn Maze” is the celebration of a liaison in a cornfield on a chilly summer night, with subtle flamenco guitar accents added to Brett’s jazzy electric to close the album on a gentle pastoral note.
Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]
Tags: Handsome Family, Honey Moon, Carrot Top Records
Read more articles like this:
Album review: Various Artists, Dark Was the Night
Album review: The Darling Downs, From One to Another
Ex Post Facto: Wilco: A Ghost Is Born
Jay Reatard
Thee Oh Sees
R. Stevie Moore
Say No! To Architecture
Loading ...
The Handsome Family
by: j. poet
Honey Moon
(Carrot Top, 2009)
The Handsome Family plays country music, but don’t expect them to appear at the Grand Ole Opry anytime soon. While their music is grown in the mulch of the old-time ballads and mountain folk songs that are the foundation of the country genre, they have an arty cosmopolitan aura that’s all their own. They’re mining a vein that is seldom prospected by today’s country artists, with the possible exception of bluegrass bands.
The Handsome Family is Brett Sparks, composer, singer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer, and his wife and songwriting partner Rennie Sparks, lyricist, Autoharp player, and harmony vocalist. The music is country, but it tends to be lethargic. It glories in solemn, measured tempos and subject matter that tends toward life’s other side, as Hank, Sr. once sang: Heartbreak, depression, decay, and implied ecological disasters abound. Brett’s baritone is so low it sounds like the earth rumbling, and it gives every tune an oracular presence that’s amply backed up by Rennie’s mystifying lyrics, which meld poetic impulses and everyday language with an effortless grace.
True to its title, Honey Moon is a romantic album, possibly the most lyrically upbeat set of tunes the Handsome Family has even given us. They haven’t entirely banished the darkness, but there are more shades of gray this time, shadows that flicker playfully at the corner of your eyes, or perhaps at the edge of the sonic landscape, cavorting with the June bugs, minnows, moths, birds, bees, and feral cats that waltz through these 12 bipolar odes.
The album opens with “Linger, Let Me Linger”, a traditional sentiment of a forlorn beau for his fair lady, delivered with the Handsome’s usual oblique lyrical approach. Brett sings, “We are like crickets in the spring, calling out from under our stones,” while ’50s R&B piano triplets march through the background, followed by a moaning funereal chorus. His processed guitar solo heightens the retro feel. “Wild Wood” is a subdued Waylon Jennings stomp; a crazed, primal love song full of stygian humor. The duo sings, “You can growl at me or hit me with a rock / When you want to say ‘I love you’ in the dark.” “Wildwood Flower” it ain’t. Brett whistles carelessly to introduce “The Loneliness of Magnets”, a ’40s-style swing tune with beautifully uncoiling jazz guitar. Brett slides up to his fractured, almost falsetto upper register to give the song a suitably desperate vibe. “Love Is Like” piles up images of disaster and decay over a throbbing drumbeat as simple as the beating of a tortured heart. No chorus, no release, just a slow sullen march to the edge of a crumbling cliff.
Occasionally, the Handsomes do manage to come through with a fairly straightforward love song, although Brett’s singing and the deliberate tempos always imply the invisible worm that rests in the heart of the rose, to plagiarize a phrase. The sighing pedal steel on “Little Sparrows” makes it sound like a mainstream country tune, and Brett and Rennie sing a harmonic lead in the tradition of Conway and Loretta and George and Tammy. Brett’s full, chiming electric guitar gives “June Bugs” a lovely, expansive feel that complements Rennie’s startling images: “I want to kiss you in thickets and dripping wet glades / As the stars rub against the dark skin of space.” The song is a quiet portrayal of a rain-dappled, perfume-thick spring evening, when the universe makes love to itself in an orgiastic frenzy of new blossoms and pheromone besotted wildlife. “The Winding Corn Maze” is the celebration of a liaison in a cornfield on a chilly summer night, with subtle flamenco guitar accents added to Brett’s jazzy electric to close the album on a gentle pastoral note.
Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]
Tags: Handsome Family, Honey Moon, Carrot Top Records
Read more articles like this:
Album review: Various Artists, Dark Was the Night
Album review: The Darling Downs, From One to Another
Ex Post Facto: Wilco: A Ghost Is Born
by: j. poet
published: April 15, 2009 in column: Reviews
no comments yet