The Handsome Family

Event information

Nashville Babylon proudly presents....

The Handsome Family + support

+ Nashville Babylon DJs

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.”

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.
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

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

Dark, elemental, mischievous and mournful —MOJO

Web: www.handsomefamily.com www.myspace.com/thehandsomefamily