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The powers of the (super)natural world beckon and cajole
in all 12 songs...There's such a freshness to Brett Sparks's music that
few
comparisons can be made...The feel, for much of this album, is of
a classic folk music wrought anew by a group that grows stronger every year.
--The
Wire (UK) on "Last Days of Wonder"
Returning to American country
some of its spiritual mystery. 4 stars--
The Independnt (UK) on "Last Days of Wonder"
"Last Days of Wonder" might just be the duo's finest hour,
full of typically nightmarish images but shot through with black humour
and moments of geniuine grace and beauty.
It's also their most musically
adventurous
album yet--The
Sun (UK)
Words that in their everyday surrealism have no parallel
in contemporary writing...Music that mines the deep veins of fatalism in
the Appalachian voice-- Greil Marcus
This is music that moves forward by turning the clock back: haunting, primal
and strangely heroic--The London Times
The Handsome Family Bio
Last Days of Wonder, the new CD by The Handsome Family, is a collection of
love
songs sung in airports, garbage dumps, drive-thru windows and shark-infested
waters. The CD celebrates the little miraculous moments of beauty found in everyday
life: a golf course shining in the rain, hanging lights bouncing in the breeze,
pigeons singing from billboards, trees blooming in squares of dirt. The songs
linger on those moments when we’re pulled from the ordinary to feel awed
by mystery, bewildered by beauty, terrified by the vast unknowable around us
(whether we wander through shady groves or crowded parking lots).
Brett Sparks, who writes the music, draws from medieval melody, country-politan
string arrangements, tin-pan alley crooners, and dusty hillbilly records to weave
together the fabric of this record. Rennie Sparks, who writes the lyrics, makes
magical realism from polar adventure stories, turn-of-the-century electricity
wars, pagan hunting songs and her own time spent (like most people) riding up
elevators, staring out hotel room windows, and driving interstate highways.
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It all feels right, clear, heroic, simple, everyday. -- Greil Marcus
A wonderful album. Tesla should be glowing in his grave. -- Telegraph (UK)
Handsome Family Downloads
The Handsome Family's releases are also available for download at Fina
Music, Other Music Digital here, and the iTunes Music Store here.
saki 036 Handsome Family Singing Bones
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There are songs about haunted Wal-Marts,
lovers who chase the fire in streetlights,the madness of very deep holes,
a lake that can only be visited in dreams, and the shadows that whisper
inside a modern, office building. It is The Handsome Family’s 6th
CD with Carrot Top Records.
Singing Bones is designed to rip holes in the veil between this
world and the next. It should surely drive most listeners into a severely altered
state in which even chicken bones at the bottom of a garbage pail across the
street will begin to sing.
The Handsome Family is Brett and Rennie Sparks who live on a quiet street in
Albuquerque, New Mexico. Every afternoon at 4 p.m. the ice cream man rolls
slowly by in a white, dented van that plays a mournful version of “Greensleeves.”
Here—sequestered in their secret, garage studio soundproofed by a wall
of poisonous, prickly pear—the Handsome Family recorded, Singing
Bones. The Sparks’ relied on their usual array of pawnshop instruments
and mail-order software. Brett learned to play the pedal steel and the musical
saw for this record and was also able to lure several local musicians into
the studio using a beer can on a string. Once caged and starved, it was easy
convince a few of them to embellish the new Handsome Family songs with trumpet,
mandolin, bowed bass, and violin. In their live performances, the Handsome
Family will sometimes be two and a minidisc player and sometimes be three (when
they can squeeze Brett’s brother Darrell into the car with his drum set).
But always their live performances will strive to be as beautiful and creepy
as a thorny rose twisting around the bleached jawbone of a dead horse.
Dark, elemental, mischievous and mournful-- MOJO
saki
027 Handsome Family Twilight
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saki 023 The Handsome Family-In the Air
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Brett & Rennie Sparks live in a
mysterious rural underworld filled with chilling tales & exhilarating
harmonies. - CMJ
The Handsome Family rise out of the shadowy forest on their new CD, In the
Air, & up into a world of gypsy moths, circling crows, & seeds in the
wind. Fireflies in the summer night, rocks rolling uphill, clothes thrown in
the snow, whispering waves, & milky moonlight all find themselves circling
the night sky of the Handsome Family's latest effort. Murder & love, terror & serenity,
sadness & joy--all of these feelings float like leaves lingering a moment
within the tracks of In the Air. It exudes the fragile beauty of handwoven
lace covering the bloody corpse of your long lost love who's been disemboweled
by a wolf pack; a record that doesn't shy away from the essential bittersweetness
of human life.
The new CD was again recorded in their living room. All sounds were captured on a Macintosh G3 (No tape! Hurrah!). This time the trusty drum machine from Through the Trees was replaced by Brett clunking on various dented cymbals, warped snares, dusty tambourines & a plastic garbage pail. Underneath the guitar & bass you'll hear autoharp, mandolin, melodica, harmonica, as well as church choirs, English horns, & pipe organs culled from the depths of our trusty noise-makers. Guest musician Andrew Bird added a layer of the diabolic with his virtuoso violin.
Who are the Handsome Family? Husband & wife,
Brett & Rennie Sparks
have been collaborating as songwriters for over five years. Brett, the bipolar
Texan, writes the music. He spent his early years listening to opera & eating
biscuits & gravy. Rennie, the lyricist, grew up on the shores of Long
Island where she swears she never entered a room without spotting a spider
on the
wall.
The last Handsome Family CD, Through the Trees, brought the band worldwide
attention (i.e. they quit their day jobs). Touring took them through the
USA both alone & with the Mekons, as well as to the United Kingdom with sidetrips
to Holland, Norway & Belgium. England's Uncut magazine named Through the
Trees the "Best New Country Album of the Year" & Greg Kot of
the Chicago Tribune pronounced it one of the Best 10 Records of the Year as
well as the number one local release. Chicago Sun-Times music writer Jim DeRogatis
placed it as one of the ten most important albums to ever come out of Chicago.
Each song is like an abridged Flannery O'Connor story read aloud by Johnny
Cash, hovering somewhere between the metaphysical & the mundane.- NME
saki020 The Handsome Family-Through the Trees
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The Handsome Family create sparse, rural, story-songs that rise and fall like an abandoned farmhouse full of crickets. The band is Brett and Rennie Sparks, a husband and wife collaboration that teeters between The Honeymooners and Macbeth.
Their CD, Through the Trees, is a camping trip in a forest of falling trees, sleeping swans, red worms, and hollow logs. Pick-up trucks stall on snowy roads. Lizards stream from horse skulls. Lonely drunks read Moby Dick and feed boiled eggs to stray dogs. Musically, the CD marks a return to simpler, more transparent arrangements. There is a departure from the traditional guitar, bass, drums paradigm and an exploration of alternative instrumental pairings such as autoharp and drum machine, banjo and tuba, dobro and melodica. The songwriting focuses on beautiful melodies to illuminate the bittersweetness of the words. Basic tracks were recorded in the Sparks' living room by Brett with additional tracks recorded by Dave Trumfio (Pulsars) at Trumfio Towers (Dave's living room and bathroom). The record was mixed by Dave and produced by Dave and Brett. Jeff Tweedy (Wilco/Uncle Tupelo) sang back-up on several songs and added some pretty guitar.
Brett, a manic-depressive Texan, writes the music. He spent his early years listening to opera and eating biscuits and gravy. He's done post-graduate work on the vocal polyphony of Johanus Ockegem, the great medieval Flemish composer, as well as delivered hole openers to oil rigs. He also spent two weeks in a state mental hospital after a full-blown manic phase brought on by the Santa Claus collection at The House on the Rock in Wisconsin.Rennie, the lyricist, grew up on the shores of Long Island, NY where she spent her childhood watching horseshoe crabs writhing on the beach at low tide. In fourth grade she was pelted with Sloppy Joes while reading The Iliad on the school lunch line.
No Depression co-editors Peter Blackstock and Grant Alden named The Handsome Family's last CD, "Milk and Scissors", one of the top ten records of 1996. After its release, The Handsome Family played eleven U.S. shows with Wilco at Jeff Tweedy's request. They also toured Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. John Peel featured The Handsome Family on BBC radio and Esquire named the song, "Drunk by Noon" (on "Milk and Scissors") "Dissipation Song of 1996." Although Matthew McConaughey chose to sing the Handsome's song, "Arlene" (off the first Handsome Family CD, "Odessa") during his Rolling Stone interview, the same song was banned from several radio stations. Some people just don't get the allegorical weight of a red-haired woman bludgeoned to death in a long, dark cave.
The
Handsome Family's live show combines guitar and bass with banjo and
autoharp as well as drum machine and DAT player, creating a unique sound
dubbed by Jon Langford (Mekons, Waco Brothers) as "Countronica". They
also like to drag a life-size plastic deer on stage with them. It makes
them feel like they're camping.
Read a review
at Salon.
saki016
The Handsome Family-Invisible Hands MLP
OUT OF PRINT
Invisible Hands is the Handsome Family's first release since 1996's "Milk
and Scissors" studio album (SAKI011) and is limited to 1000 copies worldwide.
A 6 song, vinyl only mini-album that comes in a full color LP jacket, It is
comprised of 5 new, exclusive songs, as well as "Tin Foil" from their last
record. Once again we're treated to a view of the world colored by gray skies,
rain on the windowpanes, and a strange, heart-tugging longing for better times
far past that probably never existed. "Tin Foil" is a loping country waltz
with reflections on physics, physical decrepitude, and relationships gone by.
It is also the subject of a short musical film shot and written by Chicago
director Bill Ward, featuring The Handsomes as actors and with "Tin Foil" as
it's premise. It will be submitted to independent film festivals shortly.
The five exclusive songs sweep through the Handsome Family repertoire, with an emphasis on traditional country and Appalachian folk music. "Cathedrals" is a Hank Williams' style peon to the gothic cathedrals in Cologne, Germany and the summer playland of the Wisconsin Dells highlighted by Brett's West Texas drawl and some tasty, if loose, slide guitar. "Grandmother Waits for You" is a mournful, beautiful, tear jerking ballad of what awaits all of us after we kick the bucket accentuated by Rennie's vocal harmonies and vivid lyrical portraits. "Bury Me Here" brings the autoharp and lap steel out of the closet and winds it's way past the graveyard like a lazy river on a hot summer day. "Barbara Allen" is a Merle Travis song from 1947 that appeared on the Bloodshot "Straight Outta Boone County" compilation. And bringing up the rear is their latest composition, "Birds You Cannot See", an instrumentally sparse, near church hymn played only on bass and autoharp that combines virtuous aphorisms with lyrical imagery beyond the surreal.
Since you last heard the Handsomes, they've become a duo, with former drummer Mike Werner departing the parched Handsome dustbowl for the greener pastures of a full time graphic arts job. Now Brett and Rennie Sparks (husband and wife) work with a drum machine the size of a pocket calculator who always shows up for rehearsal on time and never breaks bass pedals.
saki011
The Handsome Family-Milk & Scissors
Fans of The Handsome Family's debut record, "Odessa" are going to have to take a few deep
breaths to drink this one in. A year and a half have passed since their first
album presaged the current influx of roots/country-influenced music now causing
so much of a stir and while the music on this new album is still influenced
and informed by traditional American roots music, there's much more here than
meets the eye.

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In some ways, that last year hasn't been an easy one in The Handsomes' camp, but fans of their unique, urban twist on stark, avant garde country music (or "Americana", or "Insurgent Country", or "Alternative Country" or whatever) are definitely the beneficiaries in this instance. "Milk and Scissors" is definitely two steps beyond where you'd expect them to be at this point. While "Odessa"'s ride was a runaway rollercoaster of near manic-depressive proportions, this album pulls most of those swerving peaks down to comfortable levels, in favor of more fully fleshing out the valleys, and methodically exploring the nooks and crannies of the caves below.
Both song writing and performance are kicked up several notches herein, with a more somber veil laid over the entire package. And while most of the wackiness of "Odessa" has receded into the distance, a darker, blacker, and much drier humor has risen in it's place. For the Handsome Family, "Milk and Scissors" is informed as much by a good book as it is a good tune. To wit, the following folks were on their minds while writing and recording: The Carter Family, Kafka, Leonard Cohen, Flying Burrito Brothers, Hank Williams, Sr., Louvin Brothers, Guided By Voices, Everly Brothers, Neil Young, and Eddie Arnold. We get to hear the stories of: Amelia Earhart's last thoughts of the dancing bear from her childhood as her plane spins out of control over the Pacific, the Little Dutch Boy who decided that saving the inhabitants of Holland wasn't such a good idea after all, an American frontier girl's diary entries as she wastes away from TB, Winnebago skeletons, the king who wouldn't smile, the traditional tune of the house carpenter and his old true love, a 3-legged dog, and raccoons runnin' off with your hot dog buns in the middle of the night.
saki005
The Handsome Family-Odessa
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SELECT DISCOGRAPHY
CDs
Last Days of Wonder, Carrot Top Records, USA; Loose, Europe
(minus Benelux and Ireland); Independent Records, Ireland; Bertus
(Benelux); Spunk (Australia), 6/06.
Singing Bones, Carrot Top Records, USA; Loose, Europe (minus
Benelux and Ireland); Independent Records, Ireland; Bertus (Benelux);
Spunk (Australia), 10/03.
Live at Schuba's, Digital Club Network, 9/02
Smothered and Covered, self-released 7/02
Twilight, CD, Carrot Top Records, USA; Loose, England; Independent Records,
Ireland; Trocadero, Europe. 9/01.
In the Air, CD, Carrot Top Records, USA; Loose, England; Independent Records,
Ireland; Trocadero, Europe. 2/00.
Down in the Valley, An anthology of past CDs, Independent Records, Europe,
11/99.
Through the Trees, CD, Carrot Top Records, 1/98, USA; Loose, 3/98, Europe .
Milk and Scissors, CD, Carrot Top Records, USA; Scout, 5 /96, Europe.
Odessa, CD, Carrot Top Records, USA; 2/95; Scout, 5 /96, Europe.
SINGLES
"My Beautiful Bride," Magwheel Records, Canada, 8/99
"I Know You Are There"
"Telephones and Telescopes"
SONGS ON COMPILATIONS
"Weightless Again", K-Tel Alt. Exposed Roots Alt-Country
Compilation, 8/99.
"Moving Furniture Around," Loose, New Sounds of the Old West,
2/98.
"Trail of Time," Poor Little Knitter on the Road, Bloodshot
Records,
10/99.
"Barbara Allen," Straight Outta Boone County, Bloodshot Records,
3/97.
"Moving Furniture Around," For A Life of Sin, Bloodshot Records, 6/94.
OTHER ARTISTS
"So Much Wine" & "Peace in the Valley Once Again" by Christy Moore, 2005.
" Weightless Again" covered by Cerys Matthews
"Don't Be Scared" on Andrew Bird's Weather Systems, 2003.
"The Sad Milkman" and "The Snowbird," Sally Timms, Bloodshot
Records, Twilight Laments for Lost Buckeroos, 11/99.
"Drunk By Noon," Sally Timms, Cowboy Sally, Bloodshot Records,
3/97.
See Handsome Family
Tour Dates
Listen to Real Audio for
"All the Time
in Airports"
"Tesla's Hotel Room"
and watch this video for "Your Great Journey" by David Bromley of icbm
all from their latest album Last Days of Wonder.
some Real Audio songs from previous releases -
"24-Hour Store" & "Far from Any Road" from Singing Bones (saki036)
"All the TVs in Town" & "Birds You Cannot See" from Twilight (saki027)
"Up Falling Rock Hill" from In the Air (saki023)
"Weightless Again" & "Cathedrals" from Through the Trees (saki020)
"Amelia Earhart vs. the Dancing Bear" & "Drunk by Noon" from Milk and Scissors (saki011)
"Arlene" & "Moving
Furniture" from Odessa (saki005)
Interview with Rennie Sparks + Greil Marcus ahead of their free music n talkin' appearance at UNC's Southern Folklife Center. Murder! Mystery!
Six live tracks recorded at Melbourne Australia's East Brunswick Club show on 2/22/07 with The Darling Downs courtesy of New Found Frequency. Banter included!
City Pages (Minneapolis) cover story on Brett and Rennie from 7/5/06 issue.
Nice feature on Last Days of Wonder from Country Standard Time.
4.5 out of 5 review for Singing Bones from Suite101.com.
Watch this three minute video clip from BBC Radio Three from their Andy Kershaw session in June 2003.
Greil Marcus names Twilight as
his number one pick in his
Real
Life Rock Top Ten at Salon.com and
this great piece on
how Brett and Rennie fit into the cannon of Harry
Smith's folk music
over at Granta.com.
Robert Christgau raves as well in his Village Voice Consumer
Guide
The Handsome Family built their own site.
Steve Makin's bafflingly comprehensive love/hate fan site is here.
Couldn't have
written it better ourselves review
of "Singing Bones" in the benchmark of cool, Pitchfork.
Folk & roots zine The Green
Man Review writes up "Singing
Bones" nicely.
Enjoy a nice
Handsome Family article in the always fabulous Pop
Matters.
Read a review
of In the Air by Peter Margasak at the Chicago Reader.
Check out this interview
with Jim DeRogatis at the Chicago Sun Times.
Read a review
of Through the Trees at Salon.
For booking information about The Handsome Family, visit High Road Touring.