"Honey Moon"
(Independent Records)
eight / ten
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THE HANDSOME FAMILY "Honey Moon" (Independent Records)
eight / ten |
Born off the back of hearing a Platter's song whilst travelling through the mountains of New Zealand, the Handsome Family's latest release Honeymoon ties the richly sewn beauty of Americana folk with an immersion of nature's quaintness and the awe it inspires. Fronted by Illinois couple Brett and Rennie Sparks, the duo, again, explore the darker cores of contemporary American folk music with its dark exteriors and haunting themes, with fine aplomb.
Recorded in the couple's converted garage studio, we're again treated with that indefatigable poetic grace that shimmered with 2006's Last Day of Wonder; the lush shifts from vintage country to whirling bluegrass with Sparks' Illinoisan drawl are as consistent and celebratory as ever. Tracks like 'Little Sparrows', and the eerie yet brilliant 'June Bugs', show the group at their most spectacular.
Thrown in between the spectacular, however, is the odd bizarre ditty - opener 'Linger, Let Me Linger' and the quirky 'The Loneliness Of Magnets' seem out of place, and perhaps set the album back a notch from reaching the heights that previous offerings have explored. Yet, along the way, the album takes on a unique quaintness unfounded in music circles of today; the themes and nature imagery prodded and poked at - ranging from tumbling asteroids heading to earth, to moths softly sipping on tears - unfurl like the great American novels that Steinbeck rolled out, and give the album a holistic and infinitely atmospheric quality.
With 'The Petrified Forest' we're offered the Handsome Family at both their musical and lyrical best - rumblings of country and folk married with Spark's harrowing tale of disturbed nature is as good a song as you're likely to hear all year. Fans of Parsons, Willard Grant, Will Oldham and the like: get on it.
Mark Kelleher
www.myspace.com/thehandsomefamily
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