new music

“A little bit creepy and a little bit country.”

Such is the self-description of The Handsome Family, an overly under-appreciated alt-country duo that your ears deserve more listening to.  It pleases me to no end to hear that the Family Sparks (Brett and Rennie) will be delivering a new release with the delivery of the new year.

For those not in the know, the Family’s sound is, in my opinion, resurrecting country music as we know it today. Not the garbage on your radio nor on cable TV, but the stuff of old before it was mutilated and exploited by corporate clowns. Not only has lead singer Brett the voice and presence often compared to Johnny Cash, but Rennie’s lyrics are so starkly beautiful and haunting that it’s hard to stop listening.  Be forewarned…words like macabre, dark, and death-obsessed are well deserved; their songs involve the isolation and cruelty of the wilderness far from any road, the bottomless pits discovered in our backyards of all places, the sudden sleepiness induced by other-worldly visitors, and the mysteriousness of the creatures of the animal world we normally disregard without second thought.

My favorite release by the Family is Singing Bones, but their most recent album, Last Days of Wonder, is a stunning release that’s more lyrically philosophical than prior releases; its undercurrent is the great journey of life sung on grandiose, temporal themes.  Journeys ranging from cosmic explosions to not-so-chance meetings in airports, even to the brief encounters exchanged at the drive-through; either way, it’s a blurry collage of life in those times when you’ve always somewhere else to be.