The Handsome Family
Everybody's (well Christy Moore's and Greil Marcus's for two) favourite gothic folk duo The Handsome Family return to Ireland in April for their first Irish appearances supporting their seventh album Last Days Of Wonder and since their guest spot at the Leonard Cohen show in the Point late last year.

Fresh from a tour of Australia and New Zealand, where we note they played two shows at a venue called The Dogs Bollix (ask them about it) the Sparks have long since had a love affair with Ireland, touring here since their tune Weightless Again leapt off their album Through The Trees and via a fledgling Uncut Magazine introduced us to the only act to have played Whelans, Dublin with inflatable snowmen and reindeer on stage.

An introduction :

THE HANDSOME FAMILY is Brett and Rennie Sparks who live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Their seventh CD, Last Days of Wonder (June. 2006) was one of Mojo's top ten American Albums for 2006 and called "an unqualified triumph" by Uncut. Of their sixth CD, Singing Bones, The UK's Independent wrote, "Rarely, even in the fatalistic world of country music, has the precarious mystery of mortality been captured with such poetic grace as on Singing Bones."

All this whilst regaling us with tales of Sad Milkmen, toads, passenger Pigeons and Moving Furniture Around. And that's without taking into account their legendary onstage bickering. Rennie Sparks has also garnered a reputation as a poet of note whilst Brett's recording skills have seen them shun any help from big name producers who'd like to move them from their Albuquerque home where all the magic happens.

They have appeared in the movie, I'm Your Man (2005), a tribute to Leonard Cohen as well as Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus (2004). In 2004, a reader's poll in Mojo named The Handsome Family's third CD, Through the Trees one of the ten essential Americana records.

Brett Sparks, who writes the music, draws from medieval melody, country-politan string arrangements, tin-pan alley crooners, and dusty hillbilly records to weave together the fabric of this record.

Rennie Sparks, who writes the lyrics, makes magical realism from polar adventure stories, pagan hunting songs and her own time spent (like most people) riding up elevators, staring out hotel room windows, and driving interstate highways. The entire album was recorded over a year's time in the converted garage studio at the back of the Sparks' Albuquerque house. Brett recorded it all on a Mac and a whole mess of wires, microphones and little metal boxes. Alongside the usual guitar, bass and drums you will hear mellotrons, ukulele, banjo, bowed wine glasses, and trombone.

Brett and Rennie (The Handsome Family) have been married for 18 years. In their live performances The Handsome Family are sometimes up to a six-piece band and sometimes just Brett and Rennie with (or without) a laptop computer.

QUOTES :

Words that in their everyday surrealism have no parallel in contemporary writing...Music that mines the deep veins of fatalism in the Appalachian voice - GREIL MARCUS

As songwriters it's the eerie, ancestral voice of 'Anonymous' they ultimately resemble the most -THE CHICAGO READER

This is music that moves forward by turning the clock back- haunting, primal and strangely heroic-THE LONDON TIMES

Dark, elemental, mischievous and mournful -MOJO

Their latest album Last Days Of Wonder :

Last Days of Wonder, the seventh studio album from Albuquerque, New Mexico based The Handsome Family, is a collection of love songs sung in airports, garbage dumps, drive-thru windows and shark-infested waters. It celebrates the little miraculous moments of beauty found in everyday life: a golf course shining in the rain, hanging lights bouncing in the breeze, pigeons singing from billboards, trees blooming in squares of dirt.

The songs linger on those moments when we're pulled from the ordinary to feel awed by mystery, bewildered by beauty, terrified by the vast unknowable around us (whether we) riding up elevators, staring out hotel room windows, and driving interstate highways.
The inspiration for the words in these songs (and especially the song 'Tesla's Hotel Room') comes from Rennie's belief that not only does our present world feel like the last days of wonder, but that human life has always felt just this way: full of a sense of impending doom and inevitable self-destruction, but simultaneously steeped in the sacred, the infinite, the impenetrable, the ever-wondrous.

She was inspired by Nikola Tesla's life because he, also, found himself in a world where science sought to remove all mystery from the world. Tesla found ways for scientific, rational thought to co-exist with dreams of the numinous. He felt drawn to invent machines to make our lives better (wireless communications, remote control), but also to build a death ray capable of shattering the planet to pieces. He wondered if X-ray beams and laser beams were the fingertips of God. His ambivalence towards the world led him to isolate himself in his laboratory, unable to shake hands with another human being or eat anything besides Saltines. One day he opened his window and befriended the many pigeons on the rooftop. Rennie, too, has found that a connection to nature brings solace when the terrors of modern human life become overwhelming and her lyrics reflect this unspoken but universal feeling about the world today.

Brett's musical compositions for the new record and his recording process were hybrids of the old and the new; the real and the fake; the analog and the digital. He drew inspiration from reading The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, which led to many experiments, like recording a kick drum using an old woofer (reverse-wired to a mic cable) as a deep bass mic.
He went trolling through hundreds of collected banks of samples on his hard drives, where he found a scratchy old Mellotron tape loop that inspired an entire song's composition ('These Golden Jewels'). Last Days of Wonder is full of such anomalies: analog compressors, vintage instruments and condenser mics, all drawn into the digital world of computer recording. For 'Beautiful William' he mixed a fake glass harmonica synth patch with a recording of real bowed crystal wine glasses (only breaking one glass in the process).

For the new CD he also perfected the technique of recording an entire drum kit 'machine style' - one drum at a time in real time then editing them all together on the computer. The virtual band created for this record got even weirder when pedal steel parts were e-mailed in from Chicago (Stephen Dorocke) and the musical saw part was e-mailed in from London (David Coulter).

This new Handsome Family record travels from swamps and caves to laboratories and bowling alleys, always celebrating the mystery and madness in love. The songs explain who's hanging shoes on telephone wires, why automatic sinks in airports sometimes don't see your hands, and why The Handsome Family refuses to go to Heaven unless flies can come too. Also, a tender tale of Tesla's last days: his love for wounded pigeons and his ability to explode light bulbs with his mind. Rennie is eaten by a wild boar. Brett threatens to pull the stars down from the sky. It's a record of love songs in the true Romantic sense (a heightened sense of nature, emotion, imagination and a rebellion against social convention).

Special guests on the record include Stephen Dorocke on pedal steel (Freakwater / Jesse Sykes) as well as saw-player David Coulter (Test Dept / The Pogues / Tom Waits).
The entire album was recorded over a year's time in the converted garage studio at the back of the Sparks' Albuquerque house. Brett recorded it all on a Mac and a whole mess of wires, microphones and little metal boxes. Alongside the usual guitar, bass and drums you will hear mellotrons, ukulele, banjo, bowed wine glasses, and trombone.