CDs

UNSEEN (2016)

Include 12 page, full-color booklet with all lyrics, as well as liner notes and art by Rennie Sparks.
Also include info and art from CD, but are pressed in a limited edition transparent green vinyl (free mp3 download code included).
Unseen continues The Handsome Family’s embrace of things beyond easy view: the slow dive of the sun, enormous bugs awakening in thorny yards, sirens, and coyotes that cry out to the purple sky. An epic western gothic masterpiece, Unseen draws from real life events. “Gold” (the first song on the record) began when a bunch of twenty-dollar bills blew in Brett’s face in a parking lot dust storm. The song “Gentlemen” is a tribute to William Crookes who built the first vacuum tube in 1875, hoping to detect spirits from alternate dimensions. Many tracks fix around the idea that light emanates from things we can’t see, including behind “The Red Door” in the empty hands of blackjack losers (“The Silver Light”), and amidst desert bones bleaching in the sun (“King of Dust”).
The album was recorded in the Sparks’ home studio at night “with only hawk moths listening” and features a rich tapestry of instrumentation which conjure images of the magical landscape of the Sparks’ New Mexico surroundings. Guest performers on the record include David Gutierrez (mandolin, dobro), Alex McMahon (guitar, baritone guitar, pedal steel), and Jason Toth (drums).

TRACKS:
01) Gold
02) The Silver Light
03) Back In My Day
04) Tiny Tina
05) Underneath The Falls
06) The Sea Rose
07) The Red Door
08) Gentlemen
09) King Of Dust
10) Green Willow Valley

WILDERNESS (2013) Available in CD or LP
Wild animals, tall tales, dark stories from American history.
Haunting music, emotionally charged, unique.

TRACKS: Flies , Frogs, Eels, Octopus, Owls, Caterpillars, Glow Worm,
Lizard, Woodpecker, Gulls, Spider, Wildebeest

SCATTERED (2010) Self-released collection of demos, covers and orphaned songs. Companion to "Smothered & Covered".
TRACKS: The Lost Soul, When it Rains, Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, Snowball, Ain't No Grave, Little Buddy, Eleanor Rigby, A Plague of Humans, Famous Blue Raincoat, Drinking Beer on the Roof, Telephones and Telescopes, Lost Highway, Honcho, The Blizzard, What Does the Deep Sea Say,
Tranqualized, June Bugs (alternate mix), One Way Up (4-track demo),
Claire Said (rehearsal tape)

HONEY MOON (2009) CD OR LP
An album of love songs (odes to a cement mixer, a praying mantis,
spinning planets...) released by Brett and Rennie on their twentieth
wedding anniversary.
TRACKS: Linger, Let me Linger; Little Sparrows; My Friend;
When You Whispered; The Loneliness of Magnets; June Bugs;
A Thousand Diamond Rings; Love is Like; The Petrified Forest;
Wild Wood; Darling, My Darling; The Winding Corn Maze

LAST DAYS OF WONDER (2006) CD only

Inspired by the age of great explorers— shipwrecks, laboratories,
bowling alleys and drive-thrus. Shopping carts abandoned, gloves
found at roadside...

TRACKS: Your Great Journey, Tesla's Hotel Room, These Golden Jewels, After We Shot The Grizzly, Flapping Your Broken Wings, Beautiful William, All the Time in Airports, White Lights, Bowling Alley Bar, Hunter Green, Our Blue Sky, Somewhere Else To Be

SINGING BONES (2003) CD or LP (LP now on 'ghost green' vinyl!)
The album that gained a second life after True Detective
used track 5 for its main title theme. Songs of strange
dreams and forgotten paths.
TRACKS: The Forgotten Lake, Gail with the Golden Hair,
24-Hour Store, The Bottomless Hole, Far From Any Road,
If the World Should End in Fire, A Shadow Underneath,
Dry Bones, Fallen Peaches, Whitehaven, Sleepy, The
Song of A Hundred Toads, If the World Should End in Ice

SMOTHERED & COVERED (2002) CD only
13 rare recordings that never made it onto other Handsome Family
CDs: odd covers, intimate demos, orphaned songs
COVERS: Faraway Eyes, Banks of the Ohio, Knoxville Girl,
Sunday Morning Coming Down, I Hear a Sweet Voice Calling,
Trail of Time
ORIGINALS: There's a City, Natalie Wood, Stupid Bells.
DEMOS: #1 Country Song, The Last, Down in the Ground
ALSO: some of Brett's instrumental pieces involving cello,
prepared piano and vocal harmony

TWILIGHT (2001) CD only
Dark dreams in city streets. Songs of streetlights,
parking lots, snowy yards and dogs in trees

TRACKS: The Snow White Diner, Passenger Pigeons, A Dark Eye, There is a Sound, All the TVs in Town, Gravity, Cold, Cold,Cold, No One Fell, Asleep Alone, I Know You Are There, Birds You Cannot See, The White Dog, So Long, Peace in the Valley Once Again

IN THE AIR (2000) CD only
Songs of wind and meadow green, piles of crutches
laid down, a beautiful skeleton high on a hill
TRACKS: Don’t Be Scared, The Sad Milkman, In the Air,
A Beautiful Thing, So Much Wine, Up Falling Rock
Hill, Poor, Poor, Lenore, When that Helicopter Comes,
Grandmother Waits for you, Lie Down, My Beautiful Bride

THROUGH THE TREES (1998) CD or LP
Songs of the wilderness, the shadows beneath the trees,
the creatures lurking in hollow logs

TRACKS: Weightless Again, My Sister’s Tiny Hands,
Stalled, Where the Birch Trees Lean, Cathedrals, Down in the
Ground, The Giant of Illinois, Down in the Valley of Hollow Logs,
I Fell, The Woman Downstairs, Last Night I Went out Walking,
My Ghost, Bury Me Here

MILK & SCISSORS (1996) CD only
Songs from a fragile, frazzled place where wounds won't
heal and ghosts howl in caves
TRACKS: Lake Geneva, Winnebago Skeletons,
Drunk By Noon, The House Carpenter,
The Dutch Boy, The King Who Wouldn’t Smile, Emily
Shore 1819-1839, 3-Legged Dog, #1 Country Song,
Amelia Earhart vs. The Dancing Bear

ODESSA (1995) CD only
Our very first record written by young kids
trying to find a pathway inward to find the old, lost songs
TRACKS: Here’s Hopin’, Arlene, Pony, One
Way Up, Water into Wine, Giant Ant, Everything that Rises Must Converge, Gorilla, The Last, Claire Said, Moving Furniture Around,Big Bad Wolf, She Awoke with a Jerk, Happy Harvest