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SINGING BONES
(Carrot Top)
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The Handsome Family are Rennie and Brett Sparks, a married couple of 15 years who write sad yet beautiful songs about strangled women, insane farmers, and blind men who hear angels whispering inside potatoes. In other words, their world is one of outsiders, castaways, and eccentric loners set against a backdrop of skeletal, country-inflected guitar strums and languid tempos. Rennie is the author of the Poe-ish lyrics that Brett sings in a somber baritone. He also writes the music and plays simple, subtle melodies on guitar, bass, saw, and pedal steel. Singing Bones marks the couple’s move from Chicago to Albuquerque, and their new desert locale is reflected in the Southwestern flavor of several of the tunes. There’s an easy mix with the trad country overtones they’ve cultivated in the past. And both styles offer dark settings for the morbid tales Rennie is so fond of writing. In "The Song of a Hundred Toads," a man heads to the gold mines with his dog and horse, but his horse soon falls off a cliff along with everything he owns. Spooked by howling coyotes, his dog snaps at him and then leaves. By the fifth day of his decline, the man is eating handfuls of dirt. Elsewhere, Brett sings of a haunted office and a 24-hour store filled with lonely souls — standard fare for the Handsome Family.
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