All That Shimmers

The elemental, organic, homespun music of the Handsome Family occupies a place somewhere between Nick Cave’s and the Band’s. Timeless and sepia-toned, deep and dark, it seems to inhabit a parallel dimension of Americana, one with its own legends and terrors, one where time has warped.  You can’t really tell from listening to them how many of them there are, how old, where they’re from.  Instead of a cult band, they could be a real cult.  Instead, they are a married couple, Brett and Rennie Sparks, who formed the band in Chicago and have since moved to New Mexico.  This is their tenth studio album, but first since “Far From Any Road” left such an indelible impression as the opening theme to the first season of True Detective. (Kudos, T Bone Burnett!)  This album deserves to creep into the collective subconscious as well, conjuring in “Back in My Day,” an imagined tall-tale past “when everything was better, darker and deep,” glittering with the mirages of “Gold” and “The Silver Light,” recasting “I Shall Be Released” as a stately country waltz on “The Red Door,” concluding with the timeless “Green Willow Valley” (previously covered by Kelly Hogan). It’s a different place than the world in which the rest of us live, darker and deep. Maybe better?