PHOTOS
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the band suitable for publication:
CD
REVIEWS
INTERVIEWS
SCHOLARLY ESSAYS
QUICK QUOTES:
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
As songwriters it's the eerie,
ancestral voice of ‘Anonymous’ they ultimately resemble the most
—THE CHICAGO READER
This is music that moves forward by
turning the clock back— haunting, primal and strangely heroic —
THE LONDON TIMES
Where others retrace well-trodden
paths and humdrum tradtions, The Handsome Family go offroad to hunt
down phantoms, to update forgotten myths and ancient black jokes
— UNCUT
Dark, elemental, mischievous and
mournful —MOJO
"The Handsome Family - as funny as fuck, as sweet as love, and as serious as death." - Uncut magazime.
Each song is like an abridged Flannery O'Connor story read aloud by Johnny Cash, hovering somewhere between the metaphysical and the mundane... - NME
Some of the greatest songs in the world in the past few years have been written by The Handsome Family - Riverfront Times
Brett and Rennie Sparks live in a mysterious rural underworld
filled with chilling tales and exhilarating harmonies - CMJ
...write the saddest, most chin-curling little songs around.
Mixed in with the existential bout with the Nothing that most
of their songs are about--that and death--is this shit-eating
sense of humor, this sense of resolve that accents many of their
songs with a devastated grin. And experienced live they can be
downright hilarious in between songs...Some of the greatest songs
in the world in the past few years have been written by The Handsome
Family.
Randall Roberts, Riverfront Times, St. Louis, MO, 10/97
The Handsome Family have obviously listened to the likes of
Willie Nelson and Townes Van Zandt--and even deeper sources, such
as The Carter Family--but they've taken this rich tradition a
step farther....[They] fashion a post modern country sound that
blends catchy melodies, deadpan vocals, waves of feedback, and
surrealistic lyrics. Their music is both rootsy and thoroughly
unhinged; as if the Velvet Underground had come of age in the
Ozarks.
Anthony DeCurtis, Men's Journal 9/96
While machine rhythms puttered and chirped, Brett Sparks sat
on a wooden chair like a preacher in his black suit and round
black glasses strumming a banjo and guitar. His wife, bassist
and lyricist Rennie Sparks, cradled and stroked an autoharp---a
stringed instrument heard frequently heard on ancient country
records---as though it were an infant... Brett Sparks' baritone
voice boomed with an authority that seemed larger than the room,
and the music---deliberately paced and mesmerizing in its sad
beauty--accrued power with each tale. A boy loses his twin sister
to a snake bite, and now he is losing his mind. Rennie's sharp,
detailed images resounded most mightily on ''My Ghost,'' in which
her husband uses her words to recount his stay in a mental institution:
a bath robe and slippers, nurses playing card games and the ties
that bound him to a double bed. As Brett's voice rose and fell,
Rennie closed her eyes, the music swallowing up both of them,
and the audience with it.
Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune, 2/3/98
...The thing that makes the Handsomes a family is the matching
of rich, haunting lyrics to music that twists and turns from the
prairie to the dilapidated high-rise. Over the course of their
CDs...this Chicago trio bring a Duchampian bent to these plaintive
mounds of faux-countrified Americana. With Brett Sparks' moody
tenor and dignified taste in lap steel and dobro, the Family broods
through a songbook that makes Leonard Cohen seem cheery. W.S.
Burroughs meets Carson McCullers--that seems to be bassist/lyricists
Rennie Sparks' forte.
A.D. Amorosi, Philadelphia City Paper, 7/96.
Because of the Sparks' fondness for the poetry and melodies
of the American musical past and the way they work within the
electrified indie rock social sphere, the Handsomes get lumped
into the alternative country movement. This they distance themselves
from, particularly the pressure to find
a singular stylistic niche. Rennie says, "There is such a
thing as American music, and it's very complicated. The more you
look , the more complex it is. It's a continuum and we just put
our bucket in there. When we play for some country fans they're
dismayed. If you play one song that has a country train beat and
then a waltz and then a song with distorted guitars, they yell,
"Make up your mind!"
Sarah Vowell, San Francisco Weekly, 11/96.
The Handsome Family pushes the
edge of the country envelope...One of the reasons I love the Handsome
Family is that it challenges listeners to think about exactly
what qualifies as country. On one level, the band reaches back
to the music's earliest days, drawing inspiration from the plaintive
yearning and soulful yodeling of the Carter Family, the Louvin
Brothers and Jimmie Rodgers. On another level, it's making music
for the new millennium...by utilizing a drum machine and beefing
up their sound with ambitious instrumental backings...
Jim Derogatis, Chicago Sun-Times, January 30, 1998
**Click here to read Lydia Lunch's INTERVIEW with Rennie for "Sex and Guts"**
**Click to read an interview with Rennie with "The Scotsman"
**Click here to read an INTERVIEW with Rennie for "Americana UK"**
**Click here to read some LIVE REVIEWS and the worst letter we've ever received
An interview with EARLASH: http://www.earlash.com/handsome_int.php
An interview with FREE WILLIAMSBURG: http://www.freewilliamsburg.com/february_2004/handsome-family.html
An interview with UNCUT MAGAZINE: http://uncut.co.uk/features/65