THE HANDSOME FAMILY (From the Irish Examiner)
The Handsome Family are one of the great oddities of contemporary American folk music. The husband and wife duo of Brett and Rennie Sparks have just released their sixth album, Singing Bones, a record enraptured with the romance of mystery and suspense, riddled with ghosts and gruesome tales, but most importantly, one that sports a real tenderness for the unexplained.
As always, the words on this record where written by Rennie, and the music is written mostly by Brett, who sings these songs with a deep drawl. For me, the experience of listening to Singing Bones hinges on these two revelations:
Firstly, the music, which on previous recordings has been mostly sparse, here unfolds into new textures conjured by combinations of dobro, mandolin, guitar, pedal steel, musical saw, mariachi trumpet, drums, auto-harp, bowed bass and banjo. And secondly, Rennie Sparks' writing has accelerated into something brilliant. Anyone who has read her menacing short story collection, Evil, will know she's a more than your average pop lyricist.
She conveys the sort of sentiments and moods probably last heard on the hiss-laden recordings of old-time folk singers, yet she references 24-hour stores, Xerox machines, automatic doors, plastic trees and computer screens as much as does "girls in white nightgowns", howling wolves and "twisted black mountains." Yet Rennie's 24-hour stores and Xerox machines are thoroughly haunted, and it's through the brilliant parallels that spring from her lyrics that she bridges her modern world with her ancient world.
In an essay the revered music writer Greil Marcus wrote on the Harry Smith Anthologies of American Folk Music he described how these great collections of lost songs and chants and had sparked a revived interest amongst the latest generation of American folk songwriters and how the tradition of these fatalistic songs had influenced The Handsome Family, particularly in the "depressed" style that Brett sang these songs. For Rennie though, the Harry Smith Anthologies represented something more.
"Sure we listened to the Harry Smith Anthology and it probably did inspire us some, but it's certainly not the only inspiration for our songs. It was one of the places that I discovered a reality that had sort of been invisible to me before - the real world of America. However, unlike Greil, I don't think this America is just weird and old. I think it is still very much a part of what it's like to live in America. There is certain coldness to these songs, a doomed quality, yes. But, I don't think it's about fatalism, it's just about feeling lost, disconnected, alone, homeless, history-less. I still feel this is the very heart of what it feels like to be American and it's this isolated quality that I think I'm trying to express in my own lyrics.
"I have always felt that it's very important for people to see that modern American life still feels the same as it did at the beginning of the 20th century in a lot of ways," continues Rennie. "I try to write about warehouse stores, office buildings, etc. to remind myself that the world I live in has the same potential to reveal mystery and magic as the world ever has. The first person who I ever encountered doing this well was Vic Chesnutt on his first record, Little. It was so personal and specific and at the same time so infinite in its empathy for human suffering - so pained and painful yet so beautiful and full of mysterious grace. I still feel that record was a sort of Rosetta stone for me that helped me to translate the old songs that inspired me into my own song-writing language.
"I do think we're inspired by American folk singers, but when I listen to the Carter Family singing I don't hear them lost in a world of hopelessness, but more as if they're aware they are telling a story, that they're the narrator not the main character necessarily. American folk music comes from the same mysterious roots behind Irish folk music, which is, I think, a veiled way of continuing the old nature religions that were swallowed up by Christianity. I think of songs sometimes as magic spells, chants, incantations. A good folk song has a power behind whatever the singer's intentions are. A song like, Wildwood Flower [June carter Cash song] is, on one level, the simple story of a jilted lover, but on another level it's a witch's potion made from wild flowers and darkness. Best let it twine through your hair and under your skin without a struggle.
"I really love a good old horror movie like The Exorcist. Those kinds of movies are so romantic at their heart. It reminds me of how the Puritans were almost a little too eager to find witches in their midst. Cotton Mather, in writing about the Salem Witch Trials, notes how the existence of witches and devils only further proves the glory of god. And, of course, it leads to the fear that if there are no witches then there may not be a devil or a god."
Many past reviews of The Handsome Family's music has outlined a comedic darkness to both their sounds and words, as if we could really take seriously a husband and wife singing about lovers disappearing into the darkness or a spooked Wall-Mart or a man from Ohio falling down a bottomless hole. But, of course, we can and we should. Sure, the Handsome Family are often funny, and their live shows are often overcome with a stream of hilarious bickering one-liners, but its Rennie's balance of deadpan black humour and genuine tenderness for her subject that makes her so great.
"That's just how I want people to feel, how I feel when trying to write about darkness and pain. All beauty and joy are inextricably tied to all pain and ugliness. The darkness defines the light just as night helps us understand daylight. In a strange way I feel like really dark songs that dwell on death can bring a strange feeling of joy, create a great reverence for the little moments of life and their fleeting quality."
Despite all the horror and explicit violence contained within Singing Bones and, indeed, most Handsome Family records, there is a very comforting sense of mystery. For most humans the unanswered questions are generally a source of anxiety, yet Rennie and Brett Sparks seem more inclined to celebrate them.
"I do really want to encourage people to allow a little more room for mystery and magic in their lives and to see that this isn't necessarily a horrible way to live. If all questions about our existence could be easily answered and understood what a horribly simple universe that would be. I take great comfort in reading that most of the universe is made up of dark matter which we can not even detect."
So ultimately, what we get from The Handsome Family is a lot more than we've often been led to believe. Behind the murder ballads and elegies to forests, the surreal tales that unite modern America with that of its past, are two serious songwriters existing pretty outside the pantomime of the pop industry. Probably the closest they've come to music industry glamour is an appearance on Later with Jools Holland or their regular five star reviews in Uncut magazine.
Brett and Rennie moved from Chicago to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the last few years, and from all accounts they fit right in. "It was a great help to move back to Albuquerque because Brett had so many old friends here who are musicians and all of them were eager to help us with the new record," explains Rennie.
"Albuquerque is high up in the mountains. The air is thin. People tend to be pretty eccentric. New Mexico is also a very isolated part of the U.S, a place people disappear. The older cultures there - the Navajos, the Hopis, the Pueblo Indians, as well as the conquistador's Spain - are still alive and well there. Very unusual for the U.S."
Singing Bones by The Handsome Family is out now on Independent Records
Live Dates:
The
Village, Dublin - Thursday 20th November
Spirit
Store, Dundalk - Friday 21st November
Cleere's,
Kilkenny -Saturday 22nd November
Half
Moon, Cork - Sunday 23rd November