Backstage Pass , St. Louis

The Handsome Family
September 12, 2002, Off Broadway

by Jessica Gluckman

Standing onstage in a thrift-store skirt with duck appliqués, Rennie Sparks, lyricist and one-half of The Handsome Family, casually told the audience, "This is one of those days where I smell my dead grandmother everywhere."

Her husband and band composer, Brett Sparks, tested the drum machine and dryly added, "Rennie's grandmother will be playing the drums tonight, by the way."

Mr. and Mrs. Sparks, now living in Albuquerque, NM in a home allegedly modeled after Bonanza's Ponderosa, were perfectly suited for the wagon wheel and whiskey bottle setting of Off Broadway. With their clever bits of dialogue, sometimes aimed at the audience and sometimes making attendees feel like they were eavesdropping on a private conversation, the two entertained fans not only with their gothic country songs but also with their barbed-wire remarks, details about nightmares, stories about deceased classmates, and, of course, their delightfully macabre lyrics.

What else would you expect from a band that sings about anorexic neighbors, lonely milkmen, and abandoned malls overrun with wildlife? With his strong Texas accent, Brett delivers lines such as "I had nothing to say on Christmas day/when you threw all your clothes in the snow" and "I won't get any cookies or tea/till I stop quoting Nietzsche" to haunting country music reminiscent of classic Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson, a combination that has won the group many admirers and accolades. Rennie also took a turn on lead vocals, descending from her gentle backing dulcet to an other-worldly madwoman's howl on "Down in the Ground." Audience members laughed after every line in "So Long," a eulogy to every animal the narrator caused to die either through neglect or accident. While most of the songs were off their last three albums, Twilight, In the Air, and Through the Trees, they did play a few older songs, including "Arlene," although the fan who shouted for "Amelia Earhart vs. The Dancing Bear" was politely ignored.

Winding up the show, Rennie reminded the audience, "This is your last chance to throw things at us."

"No," Brett said, "you'll have other chances."

The Independent
The Handsome Family, Lyric Hammersmith, London
A complex tale of country folk
By Gavin Martin
23 April 2002

Are the Handsome Family for real or are they a performance-art put-on? The
Texan-husband-and-Jewish-wife duo, Brett and Rennie Sparks, amble on stage
with knapsacks slung over their shoulders. They look like a pair of mature
students about to devise their own syllabus.

Tonight they are joined by a real drummer, Brett's brother, replacing the
drum machine that had become a restricting element in their music. The new
looseness brings immediate dividends on "A Beautiful Thing" and the wondrous
alcoholic lament "Too Much Wine". We're immediately enveloped in their world
­ the sad but steady beat, the simmering cymbals, Rennie's faltering
patchwork bass, Brett's dark, lurid guitar and big bruised voice, a wondrous
instrument with a direct lineage from their fellow Lone-Star legends Ernest
Tubb and Waylon Jennings.

Country music ­ real country music, as opposed to the marketing sham long
perpetuated by the Nashville establishment ­ has always thrived on eccentric
characters, off-kilter world views and outside cultural stimuli. The
Handsomes' post-Millennial folk flits between urban dystopia and rural
unease and fits the bill perfectly. The songs range from sharp social
observation ("The Giant of Illinois") to intensely personal visions of
heaven ("No One Fell Asleep Alone", "So Long"). They take bed-rock country
concerns ­ life, death, drink and natural wonder ­ and spice them with
Rennie's love of mystical Eastern poetry and Brett's supine longing and
prefab rockabilly.

A performance-art put-on could never attain the depths of feeling, the
knife-edge blend of wonder and terror, sadness and beauty that is their
show's hallmark. They joke a lot, but their art is unmistakeably the product
of their loving, complementary relationship. Live, they cast a unique spell,
an all-enveloping view of the universe that carries on through the songs and
in the surreal, whimsicalstream-of-consciousness between-song banter.

Perplexed, Rennie gazes at the dry ice swirling toward the roof and wonders
aloud if there's a fire backstage. Brett asserts that it's his amp smoking
after one of the evening's many strangulated guitar solos. Certainly, there
are many technically more proficient musicians but few who could bring the
feeling and tenderness to the songs that they do. Rennie plays Casio
keyboards and melodica and cradles her autoharp like a mother nursing a
baby. She assures us that there's a roomful of kittens waiting to be handed
out ­ free ­ to well-behaved audience members at the end of the night. There
are songs featuring birds, severed heads, the blaze of hellfire. Brett sings
in a range of voices ­ a lovelorn vagabond, a cracked ghost or a disturbed
preacher.

A dysfunctional family? Maybe so; God forbid they should ever resort to the
merely functional.

**********************

The Handsome Family
Lyric Hammersmith, London
Betty Clarke

Wednesday April 17, 2002
The Guardian

It's the tension and affection between husband and wife Brett and Rennie
Sparks that make the Handsome Family stand out from the swelling alt.country
scene. Talking at cross purposes as they peer at each other through their
glasses with unconcealed delight, the Sparks are Richard and Judy with
George and Tammy's guitars.

Although the pair are united through a love of morbid humour and a passion
for prose, their lyrical strength lies in their individuality. Where Brett
writes intimately, explaining his actions and feelings, Rennie dissects
newspaper stories and reassembles them using surreal images of nature and
death. Brett ekes strangled notes from his guitar, never quite sure what
sound is going to emerge and embracing the element of surprise. Rennie plays
her hushed keyboards and gentle melodica thoughtfully. Together they find
poetry in the ordinary and seek darkness around every corner.

Rennie acts as our surreal narrator, explaining the fairy-tale ideas behind
each song. "This was meant to be a song about how God is on your side, but I
think it's also about being a psycho," she says, her black skirt swishing
over her knee-high black socks as she introduces I Know You Are There. Brett
overcomes giggles from the audience as his low, husky voice evolves into a
full-blown Howard Keel impression, all booming intonation and Showboat
posturing. Then that fades away and he indulges in some unexpected crooning,
his eyes closed, his heart lost in the sparse sounds around him. A love of
the perverse is the very essence of the Handsome Family.

Rennie explains that until recently they lived on the worst street in
Chicago - "Women would be vomiting into their handbags," she tells us - and
were surrounded by urban nightmares. So they chose to write country songs.
The theme of nature in an unnatural environment is constant, with the
slow-burning rhythms and softly shuffling drums offering air despite the
claustrophobic subject matter. Birds You Cannot See, from the new album
Twilight, tells the story of a nursing home going up in flames and birds
carrying off the survivors. All the TVs in Town reveals solitary sources of
light in a city of darkness.

But it's the humour that keeps the Sparks' songs honest and prevents them
from becoming sentimental epitaphs. In So Long, Brett details all the
spiteful acts he committed on animals as a child. "So long to the squirrel I
accidentally shot," he sings, before happily messing up a guitar solo. Soon
after, he struggles with a harmonica only to throw it aside. "Dylan never
did that," Rennie remarks, only half joking.

**************************

THE HANDSOME FAMILY
BARBICAN CENTRE, LONDON

The Barbican Centre, for all its acoustic perfection, is hardly the most atmospheric venue in the world. Luckily, it's host to the mighty Handsome Family, whose dark humour and evil alt-country transcends their sterile surroundings.

Quite simply, they're superb. Husband and wife duo Brett and Rennie Sparks bicker brilliantly all night, punctuating every song's malevolence with hilarious accusations and insults. Accompanied by a minidisk player containing all their drum tracks and with Morticia Addams look-alike Rennie switching from Casio keyboard to bass guitar to autoharp, the pair make a strange spectacle. Once the music starts though, you soon realise you're in the presence of greatness. The comfortably seated crowd are treated to classics like 'So Much Wine' and 'Drunk by Noon' alongside gems from their new 'Twilight' album including the none-more-bleak 'No-one Fell Asleep Alone' and the dead pets' anthem 'So Long'.

Basically, I could write all day about the genius of this band but unless you've experienced them yourself you just wouldn't understand. When we're all dead and up in heaven all the angels will be split into two groups ­ those who saw the Handsome Family when they were alive and a grumpy group of those who didn't. Fucking awesome.

Words: Robert Collins

*************************

The Handsome Family
Live at the Barbican, London
November, 2001
"Uncut Magazine"
by Gavin Martin

Rennie Sparks looks like a deep sea diver plucked out of water as she accompanies her husband on the miraculous "Weightless Again". There's a tube in her mouth, attached to her keyboard. Has no one told her about the dental disaster that followed Peter Frampton's use of a similar gizmo in the Seventies? In years to come, will they have to rename this song "Toothless Again"?

The Handsomes may be dwarfed by the equipment crowded on stage for the White man (co-bill with Jim White), but tonight their subversive approach to technology, literary and folkloric influences, comes through clearer than ever. They are the support act, but emerge as show-stealers. Though not pitched as an explicit anti-war performance, the reckless, unthinking bombast that characterises the worst of America is put into sharp relief by songs layered with doubt, humility, tenderness. The Handsomes do what they've always done--but with recent events casting a long shadow, their blend of sombre nostalgia and regard for the destructive/regenerative power of nature captures the zeitgeist in a way few can hope to equal.

A pair of loveable misfits--Brett, the checked-shirt, burly, bipolar, born again (reformed) Texan, Rennie the neurotic, Upstate, acid-altered Jew--they can seem as if they've escaped from the Tate Modern surrealist exhibition across the river from The Barbican. The casual uproarious repartee between songs puts Rennie in the Catskills stand-up comic tradition, with Brett the perpetually harassed Oliver Hardy straight man.

But, as the Yanks say, that is all salad. Musically, they have developed an astonishing directness and presence which give "Sad Milkman," The Giant of Illinois" and "All the Tvs in Town" the depth they deserve. They don't ham it up, but the performance is the result of a deep love. Brett's brave, affirmative vocals have an angry fire stoking the wounded longing and prayerful invocations. Rennie's words are funny but barbed, perfectly capturing and assessing the fear and isolation that are the life force below the surface of corporate America. Their closing song dips and rises into the line, "old buildings sigh when aeroplanes fall from the sky"--written long before September 11, it's a reminder of the timeless, premonitory nature of their work.

No way would Rennie and Brett fall prey to the Frampton syndrome. Peter y'see, sucked. Brett and Rennie blow away the trappings and give the best America has to offer. Treasure them now, more than ever.

It's all in the Family
Antique to post-modern, their music's off the map

By Greg Kot
Chicago Tribune rock critic
Published January 26, 2002

Rennie Sparks, who shares the Handsome Family name with
husband Brett, was regaling the audience at the sold-out Hideout with between-songs banter that someday will have to be preserved in a box-set recording at the Smithsonian as an example of early division. The soul-crushing job she and her husband once held, she told the audience Thursday, was in "the next town past where the map ends."The same could be said of the Handsome Family's twisted neo-country tunes: They come from somewhere off the map, very much of America yet somehow disturbingly alien. It's as if these songs make us look at things we dare not see, or certainly are not invited to see in most contemporary pop songs. Handsome Family music manages to sound both antique and postmodern. Rennie Sparks strums an autoharp, a homely instrument once most closely identified with the Carter Family, while Brett Sparks fiddles with automated drum beats. She cautiously plays one-fingered "solos" on a tiny keyboard that looks like it could be had for 20 bucks at a flea market. He follows a demented electric guitar solo --fierce, fractured, dissonant, like James "Blood" Ulmer deconstructing a honky-tonk tune -- by scratching out a rattlesnake rhythm on a washboard.

Through the magnifying lens of their quirkiness, the lyrics of Rennie Sparks illuminate the horror, tragedy and comedy of the everyday. She does almost all the talking between songs, a kind of
stream-of-consciousness self-mockery that plays like an extension of her stunningly melancholy
song-poems. During the songs themselves, she is the serene foil, the minimalist accompanist on
bass, the embroiderer of melodies on autoharp and keyboard. Brett Sparks takes his wife's lyrics
and imbues them with dignity, his baritone voice the stuff of pre-rock 'n' roll crooners, church
choirs, Nat King Cole and Carter Stanley. He invests a line about a million passenger pigeons being "clubbed and shot, netted, gassed and burned, until there was nothing left but miles of empty nests" with such mellow, honeyed warmth, he could have been singing a child to sleep.

At times, singer-guitarist Edward Burch and Nora O'Connor became extended Family members,
their voices providing comradeship even as the songs spoke of loneliness and despair. There is a
vague serenity at work in the Handsome's music, a sense that dusk is falling, the planet is spinning,
and there is nothing the fallible characters in their songs can do to forestall the inevitable. The it begins as soon as we are born, and that priceless knowledge has allowed the great songwriters
through the centuries, from the Scottish balladeers to Hank Williams Sr., to savor every living
moment. The Handsome Family carry on that tradition, unhurried observers of the slow decline that
is the human condition. The hymnlike radiance of their melodies, the unwavering steadiness of their
tempos and the exotic meld of their instruments conjure a planet of horrible beauty: the very one we
all share, whether we know it or not, the one "past where the map ends."

Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune

The Handsome Family
12 January 2002: Bottom of the Hill " San Francisco by Jillian Steinberger
PopMatters Music Critic

The club was packed, and the crowd by the bar only shushed when Brett and Rennie, like a young, perverse Johnny and June, took the stage. It was like welcoming a punk rock Mr. Green Jeans. The witching hour had begun, and indeed, it was midnight, when most headlining acts begin at Bottom of the Hill.

Remember those tales about Bloody Mary when you were a kid? Rennie Sparks, the Mrs. of the duo known as The Handsome Family, may have taken them to heart. The evening started off with her announcement that "This first one is about Santa bringing a bottle of wine and a trip to the emergency room." Then they launched into "So Much Wine". The audience was appreciative. I saw a couple Stetsons, a few longhairs and, of course, the usual San Francisco hipsters.

Rennie and Brett Sparks have been called the Morticia and Gomez Addams of alt.country. A combination of somber melodies and tales of suicide, murder, madness and wounded animals, what sometimes comes across as stark and minimal on the albums is actually strummy and sickly comedic live. By singing Rennie's darkly whimsical lyrics in a deadpan style, Brett gives the music an edginess: their murder and suicide ballads are sung straight. If you're not listening you might miss the one-liners Brett speaks of. But they're there, and live, the couple's wicked sense of humor is pronounced and cuts through the existential dread.

Rennie's role is primarily lyricist for this gothic Americana act. However, she was charming on the instruments she'd brought with her -- banjo, bass (a wacky-looking Steinberger that sounded fab), lo-fi Yamaha keyboard, and an autoharp she clung to like a rag doll.

"All I want to do is play the banjo", said Rennie, after receiving a big round of applause from the audience for her playing on "Dark Eye". Commenting playfully, her husband, Brett Sparks, raised an eyebrow and said, "Somebody's been practicing." Before launching into the song, off their acclaimed fifth album, Twilight (Carrot Top, October 2001), he'd let slip that this was Rennie's first time playing banjo in public. She'd blushed and protested.

An accomplished and confident musician, Brett stuck to his electrified acoustic guitar, plus harmonica on a couple songs, whistles, and the drum machine (with remote control). "On tour we're lo-fi, stripped down, by necessity", Brett explained after the show. "But when we record we're lush. We're touring with a drummer in six months -- it's more human than the drum machine".

Clinging to a ragdoll rather than an autoharp would not have appeared out of place for Rennie, who has a homespun, farm girl look with a residual punk rock edge. Rennie's ensemble was St. Vincent de Paul chic -- a blue jean skirt with a large smiling frog appliqué (reflecting the innocently off-kilter nature themes of many of her songs), a mismatched brown button down man's shirt, black tights and thick-soled, lace-up sensible shoes. Plus, for glamour's sake, matte red lipstick -- something every post-punk girl needs, even if she has gone alt.country. Rennie's stringy brown hair, lanky body and four-eyes are all in character -- she herself is a doll, mischievous, pretty, sweet -- and definitely one twisted sister.

The critics have praised The Handsome Family's country-folk surrealism, but they've overstressed the grim nature of the music. Brett and Rennie emphasize the humor, black as it may be. Says Rennie, "People think we're trying to form a suicide cult. That would be bad marketing. Didn't Ozzie Osborn say that about the satanic subliminal messages that parents thought were on his records? I don't want to kill off my fans. I want them to live long and be happy. I want to make them laugh".

Brett, with a short beard and wearing a plaid button down with pearl snaps and blue jeans, echoed his wife's words. "Everybody thinks we're gloom and doom. They're like, 'Don't invite them over for dinner, a lot of fun they'll be!' But we're really hopeful and comical. There are so many jokes and one-liners in our work. We think we're pretty funny"!

They are funny. A good part of what makes the show entertaining is their darkly witty banter. That banter had the audience in the palm of their hand, as when Brett exclaimed, "Shit fuck"! and Rennie responded, "Is everything ok"? "Every inch of my body aches", moaned Brett. Rennie smiled and in a satisfied voice commented, "I feel okay." Then she threw the audience a knowing grin. They laughed.

There's nothing like a suicide song sung to a pretty tune, especially in a rich country baritone like Brett's. A song that had singular meaning for San Franciscans was "Weightless Again", from 1998's Through The Trees. It's the tale of men and women lost in the great outdoors, a warped elucidation of why "people OD on pills and jump from the Golden Gate Bridge". Rennie played sweetly on a small, ultra lo-fi Yamaha keyboard for this number, and Brett's excellent guitar playing was strummy and jangly. The song reached in and grabbed the minor chords right out of you.

"I like to sing". Brett proudly confirmed his baritone and explained that he grew up mostly in New Mexico and Texas, listening to local music. His vocal range is impressive, from opera to country and western, and multi-octave.

He's also not bad with a guitar --he's very good, in fact, and imaginative. He may play a song straight through in country and western style, then end it noisy a la Sonic Youth by plucking at seemingly random strings, ending with dissonance. (Indeed, the duo distantly recalls the disbanded cowpunk outfit, the much-loved Killdozer, on the Touch Go label, because of their humor. Killdozer also had its roots in Chicago and southern Wisconsin.) Live, Brett ends songs unlike any musician I've seen. On their eighth song, "All the TVs in Town", from the new album, Brett pointed at the drum machine and uttered, "Stop, stop, stop"! when it wouldn't turn off. The audience was in stitches.

He's an amusing, self-referential performer. He shared with the audience that it was his birthday that night, and on "Grandmother Waits For You," which sounds like a scary Peter, Paul and Mary song, he'd call out, "chorus"! For the encore, "Furniture", which he performed hesitantly at an audience member's request (and had trouble remembering the words), he explained nostalgically that it was the first song he'd taught Rennie. He called out "coda"! and "outro"! Again, the audience was in stitches. Hopefully the Sparks will record a live album.

Rennie often glances over and smiles unconsciously at her husband while he plays. That chemistry is also apparent musically through their vocal harmonies and the accomplished duets of their string playing, as on "Drunk By Noon", from 1996's Milk and Scissors.

It's always a treat to see a great act at Bottom of the Hill, one of only a handful of independently owned clubs left in San Francisco. It's an important stop for many critically-acclaimed indie bands as they tour, making their way up the Pacific Coast to Portland, Seattle and Vancouver from L.A. It's a small venue, where the audience gets close up and personal with the performer -- you can see the pupils of their eyes, see their fingers pick the strings, the drumstick tap the tom tom, up there in front near the stage. Performers mill around the club after the show, accessible to their fans.

After the show, Rennie looked at my pad and wrinkled her nose. "I saw you scribbling up there", she said. "You take lots of notes, like me. Some girls, they write three words and they're done. Not me. I don't know how those girls do it". With the librettos in her oeuvre, I somehow felt honored to be in the Rennie school of note-taking.

Brett, who likes playing with his wife because "I don't have to leave my family at home", is a nice guy. In fact, the Sparks are folks you'd enjoy sitting around with drinking Old Mill on the porch on a Midwestern summer night watching fireflies twitter, listening to cicadas hum, playing a few hands of poker -- and telling ghost stories.

The Handsome Family's fans are loyal. A tall, fresh faced fellow who looked not-so-long-off-the-farm awkwardly tried to hand Brett a fifty dollar bill. He guffawed, saying, "This is embarrassing, but I downloaded a couple of your CDs off the Internet, and I really want to support you. I feel like a jerk for those downloads". As he held out the bill, Brett put both hands up in the universal "stop" sign, chuckled good-naturedly, and begged off. "You don't have to give me your money", he protested. The fellow persisted. "Hey, if you really want to, okay", Brett said, "but, I download stuff and I burn people's CDs all the time, too. No problem, man"! Then he nodded, threw me a wink and said, "Now there's a story for you".

NME
The Handsome Family - Live @ ULU
Handsome Family singer Brett Sparks glances to his left and smiles at his wife and co-member Rennie. She's just made a wisecrack about his hat. It follows an earlier crack about little kitten tails in German stews. The Handsome Family have been working this tale forever, splicing their kooky, bitter tales of suicide, murder and milk with old school vaudevillie. At times, it threatens to overshadow their songs - the real reason they have become cream of the alt.country crop. But "Last Night I Went Out Walking" remains sinister and ghoulish, "The Giant Of Illinois" a paen to outsiders and "Weightlless Again" a fearless classic that speaks as much about alienation as anything from Joy Division in their prime.
Their songs may be constructed from the most minimal of sounds - an ancient drum machine, guitar and bass as the root - but when the Handsome Family hit their stride, there are few live acts who are more scary or majestic.
Paul McNamee

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