HANDSOME FAMILY: Through The Trees ( Carrot Top/Loose) *****

One of the abiding images of Russian film-maker Andrey Tarkovsky is of a farmhouse set adrift from the rest of the planet but still littered with books and art. The Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy of the No Depression movement - Rennie and Brett Sparks -  a.k.a. The Handsome Family could be imagined at home in similar clapboard surroundings perched somewhere on top of a Chicago tenement block . Along with the books and art though you’d have to include some plastic animals ( they take them on stage with them!) and a batch of dusty pre-war 78’s and post-war C&W LP’s. In recent publicity shots the baseball cap and indie clothes of old have been replaced by period costume and a pose similar to the Grant Wood ‘American Gothic’ painting. This ‘gothic’ bent is mere window-dressing for a band that has more than enough substance without resorting to gimmicks.
Starting out as a trio but losing the drummer along the way their first effort on the Carrot Top label –‘Odessa’ - was not entirely successful as it tried to sew a quilt out of patches of indie bluster and C&W parody. With second disc ‘Milk and Scissors’ accolades started coming their way. The workload was redistributed with Rennie contributing most of the lyrics whilst Brett started honing that smooth baritone to convey his partner’s impressive songs. From the opening track intellectual sharpness and musical eclecticism from a duo steeped in folklore and classical music (  Brett has done post-graduate work on a Flemish medieval composer) combines with an awareness of contemporary literature. Lyrics depict a landscape straight out of ‘dirty realism’ but with a skewed sensibility that leans towards ‘magic realism’. They almost invent a whole new genre of ‘Fairy-Tale Country Music’ with lines like –“ burnt out cars on my fingers” and  “skeletons beneath this bankrupt town” as they mine back into the pre-war folk territory of the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk  Music. Brett sings a beautifully heartfelt rendition of his sole lyric contribution ‘#1 Country Song’ which brings to mind Lefty Frizzell as much as Beck as the indie influences fall away. You can almost imagine them sneaking down to a basement full of historic ballads and dragging them back up the tenement stairs with glee.

‘Through the Trees’ has already received plaudits from a wide range of critics and not only in the alt-country field suggesting that they fit easily into a genre that would include Will Oldham, Gillian Welch and Freakwater.  Original ‘4th member’ and producer Dave Triumfo works wonders with soundscapes assembled from an array of instruments and it is hard to believe that parts of these tracks were recorded in the Spark’s flat! A Wilco connection appears with the participation of Jeff Tweedy who adds backing vocal and guitar fills on some tracks. This disc should firmly establish the Sparks as major writers in the left-field country area as they’ve set out like pioneers from the known borders of Alt-Country and seem willing to mix contemporary realism with an almost primitive pilgrim hymnal. Tracks resonate with a fear of ‘urban’ displacement in much the same way that the original settlers sang hymns against the ‘wilderness’ beyond the stockade.  Their songs carry hints of Appalachian ballads, old-time music and 1940’s and 50’s country ballads mixed up with nursery rhymes and even a touch of the New England Witch Songs. Their modern world is an unsettling place to be and they bring out pre-electric irrationality in the Chicago of today with ‘The Woman Downstairs’ with its haunting and wistful ‘emigrant band’ tuba. Characters fall through the net of their tenement never to be seen again whilst the city outside becomes as frightening as the rural Eden that met the pilgrims with nothing but rocks and snakes. Rennie’s lyric feel catches this bewilderment with an almost prosaic exactitude – “ she left it on the dryer, she died in June…her boyfriend went back to New York”. The workaday fears that infused the old ballads have been updated to a contemporary setting. There are few lyricists working in this fine and oblique a way and she deserves praise for a new angle when the amount of literate but essentially dry confessional writing grows every taken in his vocal delivery. Texan-born he is reminiscent of the great Tex Ritter ( another explorer of folk heritage) who has produced tracks as strange and off-kilter as anything the Handsome’s can produce here. Murder ballads and strange old-time songster material certainly fuels this material but they largely avoid the veneration and archival approach that spoils so much ‘revival’ folk. A song like ‘Down in the Valley of Hollow Logs’ whilst reverberating with old-time references still manages to be as sharp lyrically as those Gaelic songs that the smooth world of modern ‘Celtic’ music seems to iron out. Rennie’s imagistic pen is as sharp as a needle on the affecting ‘Old Ghost’ where she deals with her husband’s  stay in a hospital ward as realistically as a contemporary poet like Sharon Olds.

To end though some lines from Brett’s sole lyrical contribution again and as it’s a good one. ‘Last Night I Went Out Walking’ starts off almost like Bruce Springsteen in its depiction of a lone figure drifting on the edge of town by a river but the melancholy tone sinks deeper as a organ and single notes fall away to a deathly hush. It could have been written 200 years ago or yesterday and therein lies this group’s brilliance. A beautiful record etched with a quill pen.
“  I want to run and tell you the thoughts that are in my head,
   But I didn’t think you’d believe a single word I said,
   The river’s water runs so cold, it calms my burning skin,
    It takes away my aching thoughts and cleanses all my sins”

this review first appeared in HEARSAY magazine