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Husband
and wife duo The Handsome Family are at the fore of a distinctly
urban new wave of country music — variously referred to as
alt.country or Insurgent Country —that has grown up in the
bars of Chicago. But to hear their songs it is hard not to imagine
them hunting squirrels in the backwoods. Their recent CD, In the
Air, is so brimming with nature that you feel that it should have
been recorded on a chunk of mighty Redwood chopped by the duo themselves
rather than on the brittle plastic of a compact disc. Dogs leap,
birds sing, cicadas hiss and an awful lot of things die.
“I’m
kind of obsessed with the two sides of nature,” says lyricist
Rennie Sparks. “The beautiful, tranquil side of it, like:
‘oh look at that cute little kitten’. And the really
horrible, dangerous and bloodthirsty side of it like: ‘boy,
that alligator ate that zebra in one bite’. I watch a lot
of nature shows on TV where it’s just all one big bloodbath.”
Rennie
and husband Brett, who writes the music and sings most of the songs,
are perhaps a little too morbid for mainstream American tastes.
They have often been referred to as The Manson Family or The Addams
Family by less kind reviewers who fail to see the beauty in the
Rennie’s macabre lyrics.
Their
previous CD, 1998’s Through the Trees, was possibly the darkest
recording to come out of the US this side of death metal. It opened
with a track featuring the distinctly downbeat chorus: “This
is why people OD on pills and jump from the Golden Gate Bridge”
and closed with the true story of Brett’s stay in a mental
hospital, with him strapped to a bed quoting Nietzsche. In 1995,
during the recording of their second CD, Milk and Scissors, Brett’s
manic-depression had taken such a hold that Rennie was forced to
check him in to the hospital for his own protection. He was spending
wildly, drinking heavily and had taken to eating cat food.
“I
was delusional,” he says. “Incapable of getting anything
done. I really thought I was the Messiah. I was writing my own bible
and starting fires in the apartment. I was a fucking lunatic. I
would go two weeks at a time without sleeping, I was down to about
145 pounds. So I went to the nut-house for a few weeks, they put
me on Lithium among other things. Long-term Lithium which I am still
taking to this day.” Rennie has also had her own share of
problems with depression and thoughts of suicide and, like Brett,
is still taking the pills.
Religion
seems to loom large over the work of The Handsome Family. Aside
from scribing his own Bible, Brett was brought up a Southern Baptist
and it was in church that he learned about music and how to sing
in such a delightfully doomy baritone. He has also been influenced
by The Louvin Brothers, a 1950s two brother Christian country act
whose cautionary tales were every bit as dark as The Handsome Family’s.
Rennie
was brought up as a Jew in New York but has also dabbled with some
less than orthodox spiritual beliefs such as those in the lyric
for When That Helicopter Comes – the story of the second coming
with helicopters taking the place of Jesus. “I’ve always
been obsessed with helicopters,” she says. “When I was
little I thought God was a helicopter. I had all these feelings
that after I died I would turn into a helicopter.”
It
is surprising to learn that lurking behind the rolling hills and
falling trees of In the Air is the latest in technology. The couple
may have recorded the album in their living room, but it was all
done on a Macintosh G3 computer – hardly a traditional piece
of country kit. But then neither was the drum machine that regimented
their previous album, the use of which was intended to completely
alienate traditionalists in the alt.country scene. “It was
completely out of spite,” says Brett. “Musically it
did work and I liked it a lot, but I thought that people would be
really critical of that. But that record was on every critics top
ten list in the US last year. It surprised the hell out of me.”
Oddly,
Chicago’s country revival was largely kick-started by two
ex-pat members of Leeds art-punks The Mekons who both now live in
the city. Jon Langford seems to be at the centre of any drunken
guitar-led stomp worthy of mention with his various bands, such
as The Waco Brothers who evoke the spirit of the pre-born again
Johnny Cash. Whilst sweet-voiced Sally Timms performs as a solo
singer not afraid to tackle the odd Dolly Parton number. She is
a firm fan of The Handsome Family and has covered several of their
songs, including two on her latest release Cowboys Sally’s
Twilight Laments for Lost Buckaroos. “They take the best of
the country tradition and then update it in the only way that can
make sense as songwriters from an urban background,” she says.
“There's an element of camp to what they do, but beneath that
you find serious little morality tales, a little like the Brothers
Grimm.”
These
morality lessons are obviously not lost on Brett who at least seems
to have learned to go a little steady on the drink. “My classic
joke is that if I get drunk and act like an asshole then Rennie’s
going to write a song about it and I’m going to have to sing
it over and over,” he says. “My punishment is having
her pull my spiritual trousers down every night.”
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