As long as you understand that two frames of Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Homer Simpson or Lil’ Abner are more real life truth than a whole TV season of Big Brother, you’ll be OK with THE HANDSOME FAMILY’s grip on reality. You sort of know that Rennie Sparks wasn’t really taught by the fish to control the weather with her mind (even though she was born in a ditch with the frogs and spiders). But she does look a lot like Lilly Munster tonight in her diaphanous “pyjamas” and her dark damsel flowing tresses. And when Brett Sparks (related by marriage) lurches grumpily off stage to find his other beer stash you pretty well know that he will soon come back with his Herman Munster neck-bolts just a bit better oiled and functioning. Even if his work shirt could do with an iron.
THE HANDSOME FAMILY have deep folk roots. The superficial headline says schlock-horror-country, but opening with a resonant “Barbara Allan” and going steadily through their delicately sick-and-bemused-in-a-weird-country routine they evoke all the best of American rueful honesty. They do the music effortlessly well. The associations for me go wider than music, into Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac and Ray Bradbury: the exotic, the childlike morbid and the grown-up painful are all wrapped-up in a tear stained comic book with great drawings.
Your reviewer, to his shame, is not familiar with the Albuquerque band’s long back catalogue. But when the great bruised and beautiful songs (tunes by Brett and lyrics by Rennie) roll on through the visceral and broken episodes of normally weird people’s everyday lives I feel included and understood. I feel undead when I’m in the Shopping Mall too. “It’s only human to want to kill something beautiful” sings this mythic failure of a man, cowed, but cunning, in the urbane presence of his fine-looking and maybe dangerous wife.
The tension between the two of them (brother Darrell keeps well out of it, head bowed low over the drum kit) goes right to the edge of uncomfortable and beyond. It’s written into the songs (never enough wine); it’s acted out in playful sarcasm and caustic sotto voce one-liners; at times it looks very real. It keeps breaking us up with laughter. As theatre this is more West Yorkshire Playhouse psychodrama than City Varieties knockabout.
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What redeems it all is the music. With occasional bursts of autoharp, melodica, pedal steel guitar (David Feeny on loan from BLANCHE) or harmonica we have a basic line-up of vocals, guitar, bass and drums (with a bit of whistling). Its loose freedom gives the old-timey songs the suppleness and spontaneity that recalls distant echoes of sessions from the likes of Woodie Guthrie and Cisco Houston, Willie Nelson or even the Carter Family. The new album “Singing Bones” is available in all the finest shops. “And also the shitty ones, we hope” adds Brett, most helpfully. On tonight’s evidence it will stand up to a good stint of serious listening. I'll be buying it.
Our opening act on the tour were the stylish but slightly mannered BLANCHE. Suits and improbable haircuts to the fore, the music sometimes flagged. BLANCHE are smart, but not yet convincing purveyors of the Jack White approach to country music. Where the Whites succeed with their fluent musical pilgrimage to the blues, the Millers (Dan and Tracee) find the more sophisticated target of the country genre a bit more of a challenge. Stealing the veneer of 50’s radio star chic, an affectionate deconstruction of the music can only really work if command of the form is faultless. On tonight’s showing BLANCHE aren’t ready to take the Nashville Cats on their own turf just yet. Dan Miller’s songs, however are pretty damn good, and my guess is that the forthcoming album “If We Can't Trust The Doctors...” will be well worth a few listens and BLANCHE can start the long haul to being as good as THE HANDSOME FAMILY one day. As well as Dan, Tracee and David (who gave us some pretty dodgy clarinet in addition to the pedal steel) BLANCHE also feature Lisa Jannon on drums and Patch Boyle on autoharp and banjo. They come, of course, from Detroit.
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