Having charted a sleepy path from the lo-fi, garagey folk-rock of their 1995 debut Odessa through the wickedly deviant country-blues of 1998’s Through The Trees, Chicago’s Handsome Family now turns its heavy-lidded eyes toward traditional country.
Musically, Brett Sparks has an intuitive grasp of the form. He’s adept at penning a mournful fiddler’s waltz (“Up Falling Rock Hill”), a twangy, Johnny Cash-like shuffle (the title cut), even a Jordanaires-styled gospel ballad (“A Beautiful Thing”). And he’s not afraid to borrow, ever so subtly, from other sources; “Don’t Be Scared” and “The Sad Milkman” recall the melodies and rhythms of the Eagles’ “Lying Eyes” and Lead Belly’s “In The Pines”, respectively. Singing in a resonant George Jones/Eddy Arnold voice, Sparks additionally gives his music, which unfolds at an impossibly unhurried Nashville pace, crucial emotional heft.
Sparks is joined, as usual, by his lyricist wife, Rennie, who sometimes lends her high lonesome harmonies and who adds the second, crucial component to the Handsome Family formula: the stories. These twisted-yet-ordinary tales concern common folks who go about their business and wait for fate to deal its hand. The characters go walking in the snow, slip and fall down; they dive into the sea and drown themselves; they take loved ones out into the woods or into the heather and kill them.
Don’t look for any unnecessary metaphorical interference from their songwriter mistress; Rennie Sparks very matter-of-factly provides the facts, and it’s up to the listener to fill in any subtext. In “So Much Wine”, the protagonist watches his drunken lover pass out, then he leaves; end of story. In “Up Falling Rock Hill”, a man shoots his brother five times, watches him fall and die, then walks away; end of story. Or is it? You’re suspicious, like when you watch a movie and the lighting for a scene doesn’t seem quite right. What’s going on? Who are these people?
Country music always relies on a dose of familiarity to make its voice be heard by the masses. This, clearly, the Family appreciates. Where the Sparkses deviate from the path, however, is in their straight-faced injection of Gothic-tinged hyper-reality so vivid that it’s surreal. Unsettling, but a rather nice itch.