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Death
Becomes Them
The Handsome Family
The Music Centre,
Temple Bar,
Dublin
11.04.02
The belief that certain kinds of music are inherently depressing is a
popularly held one, though not one I'd subscribe to. Obviously, music
can shape one's mood, but I think it's going too far to say that a few
pop songs are actually going to cause depression. People with a tendency
towards melancholy - teenagers of a particular temperament for example
- will tend to listen to sombre music, but it's important remember that
the Leonard Cohen LP is a symptom and not a cause of the gloominess. The
only music that actually brings me down these days is the strummy pap
of Travis, Coldplay, Turin Brakes and all the rest, and then only because
of the sheer poverty of ambition involved. By contrast, the band appearing
before us tonight, though their songs are very often concerned with tragedy
in general, and death in particular, fill me with nothing but joy at the
way they grasp the tremendous possibilities of music made outside the
mainstream. Say hello to Mr. & Mrs. Brett and Rennie Sparks. They are
The Handsome Family, and they may well be the most alternative band in
the world.
If you booked your ticket for tonight's show by credit card, you will
have paid no booking fee or handling charge. This is because neither MCD
nor Ticketmaster have got their grubby little hands on the Handsomes,
who promote all their shows themselves. Another happy by-product of this
arrangement is the fact that you get a proper ticket, like in the old
days, one you can blu-tack to your bedroom wall, and not yet another piece
of grey Ticketmaster cardboard. (Tonight's tickets are on red card, with
black silhouettes of tall evergreen trees, taken from the sleeve of the
most recent album, Twilight.)
If you wanted to buy a T-shirt from www.handsomefamily.com there used
to be a note on the site from Rennie asking you to e-mail her, specifying
your size and desired colour. She'd pop out to the shop and buy a shirt
for you, then bring it home and print it herself. After the show, it's
the band themselves who pack up all the equipment. Go down to the stage,
they'll chat to you, sign books & CDs, put up with all the stupid stuff
you drunkenly blurt out to them. The Handsomes are not signed to a major
label, but release their records through a different independent label
in each territory. Business arrangements such as these allow the band
to succeed on their own terms, without having to even acknowledge the
existence of the corporate music industry, without being tainted by the
sell-outs, compromises and hypocrisies that were reviled by alternative
bands in the early nineties, even as they committed the self-same crimes
themselves. This is music as cottage industry; in other words, it's punk
rock.
Mr. & Mrs. Sparks are a peculiar poster couple for the punk rock dream.
For a start they don't play the now-fashionable "alt.country". The Handsomes
play their country straight, old-fashioned and pure. It's safe to assume
that cross-over is the last thing on their minds. Secondly, they are a
decidedly eccentric pair. He's a stocky, bipolar Texan singing Rennie's
lyrics with a big strong baritone that recalls Country & Western singers
of the 40's. He inevitably wears jeans and a lumberjack shirt, sometimes
with a baseball cap that makes him look like the Unabomber. She's skinny,
bespectacled, Long Island Jewish, and dresses like a First Year Arts student
let loose in a charity shop. She can't really sing at all, bless her,
but will coo some nice soft harmonies, and on some songs (particularly
the excellent "Down in the Ground", performed splendidly tonight) takes
the lead with a highly impressive caterwaul, which either sounds fantastic
or terrible or perhaps both. She uses an array of odd-looking instruments
to accompany her husband's guitar and vocal, including one of those little
organ keyboards that you power by blowing into a little tube. The whole
makes for an interesting tableau.
On stage, Rennie does most of the talking; telling stories about what's
been happening in the Sparks household recently, what this or that particular
song is about. Tonight she's amused by Brett's footwear, a pair of carpet
slippers. "Brett's hitting his guitar effects pedals with slippers on!
That's the least rock'n'roll thing I've ever seen!" "Hey, they're comfortable"
is all Brett sees fit to say in his defense. Rennie smiles sweetly over
at him and continues her stream of good-natured ridicule, which he takes
with equanimity. They're like a twisted version of Sonny & Cher.
In describing the Handsome's music, critics tend to fall into one of two
traps. The first is to use terms like "creepy", "gothic" or even "macabre".
Admittedly, the songs are not about things that could conventionally be
called cheerful. But this is a distorted view, ignoring as it does the
jokes that come thick and fast both in the songs and between them, and
the touching tales of threadbare romance that accompany the murder ballads.
The humour leads other critics to view the whole Handsome project as a
joke, a pastiche of the occasionally morbid concerns that have always
been part and parcel of a particular kind of country music. Both of these
views are a little patronising, as they assume that it's all just a schtick,
that Brett and Rennie are only playing with the musical form they've adopted.
Neither make any sense whatsoever when you listen to the songs, the best
of which are stunningly beautiful. Rennie has said that her and Brett's
music is an attempt to make some sense of the world, to celebrate life
by accommodating both the moments of intense pain and those of intense
happiness. It's a joke, yet not a joke. It's funny, but only because it's
sad too.
In "So Much Wine", Brett narrates the story of driving off into the wilderness
after one too many binges by his alcoholic lover. As he looks up at the
stars, he realises that he must leave her. We are given no shot at a happy
ending, no hint that she later cleaned herself up, or even that he himself
moved on to better things. The last we hear is that "I came back for my
clothes/when the sun finally rose/But you were still passed out on the
floor". This is too awfully human to be a joke or a horror-show spoof.
With its sweet harmonies and melancholy harmonica break, it is just incredibly
beautiful, and incredibly sad. You don't write a song like that if you're
only kidding. Anyone who sets out to make "Depressing" music will never
truly connect with an audience, because they view the suffering they attempt
to describe morbidly and voyeuristicly, not compassionately. But in "So
Much Wine", there is a tremendous tenderness, an understanding of just
how bad things can get. He's leaving her, and she's too drunk to even
see him go. The situation described is not one that is likely to raise
laughs, but the song is not "depressing", just human and humane. It is
in fact is a miraculous artistic achievement, to be able to tell such
a story, with such compassion - and all in two six-line verses.
The Handsome Family sing dozens of songs like these to an appreciative
and intimate Music Centre audience. Some are sad, some are funny, some
are very strange. Behind them all is a deep and genuine connection to
an American folk tradition going back a couple of hundred years. Murder
ballads have long been part of that tradition (long before Johnny Cash
shot a man in Reno just to watch him die), as they have in almost any
folk tradition. Irish Ballads and Sean-Nos have songs about death and
tragically lost love, but no-one calls them depressing, or makes jokes
about students and bed-sits. Ultimately, the Handsome's jokes are only
a cover for a more noble folk project, an attempt to look honestly and
compassionately at the darker side of life, not to ignore it and therefore
to ignore the pain of others. It does not bring me down to hear these
songs, because there is no sombreness in them, only a healthy and up-front
attitude to life and death, of the kind that has tended to flourish more
in the rural communities from where country and folk music originated.
In the sweet, funny "So Long", Brett & Rennie apologise to all the pets
they've accidentally killed, to the bugs burnt in childhood with a magnifying
glass, "to whatever was in that hole I bricked over". It's neither sentimental
nor smart-alec, and in a minor way, is an encapsulation of everything
they stand for. Just because something's sad, it doesn't mean you shouldn't
talk about it. You talk about it honestly, to show that you care, and
to help you to accept it, as accept it you must.
In an environment where Radiohead moan about globalisation while happily
making a fortune from it, where Fred Durst manufactures teen angst as
he approaches his thirties, and where "Why does it always rain on me?"
is considered a legitimate complaint, its nice to see someone behave like
an grown-up. Taking things seriously enough to face up to them, and perhaps
even do something about them, The Handsome Family are making some of the
best music made anywhere in the world today, and distributing it in an
honourable way (Radiohead take note). It is nice to think of them, in
their house in the New Mexico desert, swatting flies with a newspaper,
then writing a fly requiem in memorium.
by
Fergal Crehan
22nd April 2001
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