Werner’s departure underscored the uncertainty of the group’s future. “I was freaked out,” says Brett. They thought the Handsome Family was kaput. “But we had some shows booked that I really wanted to do. So we tried to do them as a duo, with guitar and bass. And since our tempos sucked, we played along with a Casio keyboard.”
To their surprise, the stripped-down lineup worked. They bought a drum machine, and decided to press on.
With Werner gone, the Sparks were left to their own devices when it came time to start work on a third album. “Through The Trees was very different,” say Brett. “We were on our own then. Whether we liked it or not, Mike was our foil.” In the past, they had tempered certain inclinations in deference to their drummer. “If he didn’t like it, we might not do a song,” Brett says. “We weren’t into being dictatorial.”
Through The Trees was recorded primarily in their living room. Despite the drum machine, added emphasis on banjo, Rennie’s autoharp, and other traditional timbres made for a more Spartan, organic sounding affair.
Through The Trees was released in 1997; the Handsome Family didn’t think anyone would listen to it. They were wrong. Critics ate it up. In England, Uncut named it the year’s best new country album. Back home, a Chicago Sun-Times critic singled it out as one of the ten most important albums ever made in the Windy City.
Their fans loved it, too. To this day, people ask Rennie when she plans to write a follow-up to what many consider the Handsome Family’s masterpiece, the fractured love song “Weightless Again”, which features the immortal lines: “This is why people OD on pills/And jump from the Golden Gate Bridge/Anything to feel weightless again.”
Such success blindsided the Sparks. They were uncertain how to live up to the acclaim, and the expectations that accompanied it. They spent three years making the follow-up. “You don’t know what to do after making a record that everybody likes so much,” says Brett. Ultimately, they did what any artist who has struck gold with a certain technique would: They changed direction.
“In The Air was the most artificial, totally studio-concocted mess that I’d ever done,” Brett says of the band’s 2000 release. “I was really influenced by Radiohead’s OK Computer, the way they used a combination of digital and analog technology. I was into not censoring myself, and putting as many noises as possible on there, without paying any attention to the implications.” He would spend days at a time arranging synthesized strings or overdubbing vocal lines.
In retrospect, Rennie thinks the baroque touches were appropriate. “In The Air is all about the air, the sky, things flying around. It seemed perfectly natural to have fake strings in there,” she contends. Regardless of the extra “lip gloss,” as she calls Brett’s enhancements, the disc was well-received, even landing the Handsome Family an appearance on NPR’s “All Things Considered” radio program.
By the time they geared up to record again, the Sparkses knew they would be leaving Chicago. They were spending up to eight months a year touring, and couldn’t justify paying the exorbitant rent on a loft they stayed in only sporadically. The result, their 2001 album Twilight, reflected their impending departure for the southwest.
“Twilight is obviously a record about living in Chicago, and leaving, and why we left,” says Brett. The record is full of conclusions: The extinction of “Passenger Pigeons”, the farewell parade of “So Long”, and “Peace In The Valley Once Again”, in which flora and fauna overtake the ruins of the last shopping mall. It is also the first Handsome Family album to list their mailing address as Albuquerque.
The final song on Singing Bones is titled “If The World Should End In Ice”. It’s a companion to the sixth track, “If The World Should End In Fire.” Brett originally envisioned it in a Stephen Foster vein, then it mutated into a Salvation Army band march. Until one day, he muted all the fake brass, and was left with just an a cappella chorus of his own multi-tracked vocals. He left it that way.
When the chilly end comes, Brett sings, he will let the blizzards cover him, and remember the red robins hunting the singing crickets in the yard, by the twinkling light of the first evening stars. Stars that will keep on shining long after he has frozen to death.
Happily ever after, indeed.
Seattle-based writer and entertainer Kurt B. Reighley has written for way too many magazines, including Details, Rolling Stone, and Interview. He is saving up for his first autoharp. Honest.
