After a lovely night out last
night I am feeling a little less than 100% this morning. It’s nothing that a
greasy brunch won’t solve, though.
Disc 1045 is…Odessa
Artist: The
Handsome Family
Year of Release: 1994
What’s up with the Cover? A man and his dog. I had all
kinds of clever one liners for this photo, but I couldn’t top the actual liner
note, which reads: “Cover photo found in
the dumpster behind our apartment and used without permission. Sorry.”
Awesome.
How I Came To Know It: I discovered the band through the
“True Detective” soundtrack, and got most of their albums – including this one
– in a huge mail order direct from the band.
How It Stacks Up: I have 12 Handsome Family albums. It is hard
to rank them because most of them came into my house in a giant glut, and I
haven’t had a chance to properly enjoy them individually. That said, I’ll put
“Odessa” in at number 6.
Ratings: 4 stars
“Odessa”
is the Handsome Family’s first album, and they are still finding their sound.
The lilting melodies and creepy murder ballads are here, but so is a garage rock
sound that you would expect to hear on a Seattle grunge album, not a folk
record. Coming to the band through their more recent albums first, this was
initially jarring, but after a few listens I realized how great the combination
is.
The
opening track, “Here’s Hopin’” is a
fuzzed out guitar song, full of feedback and grit. It is a simple, slowly
changing chord progression with Brett Sparks’ vocals floating back in the mix,
half rock star, half ghostly message from beyond. It wasn’t the folk music like
I was expecting, but it didn’t matter.
When the
Handsome Family rock out (as they do often on “Odessa”) the influence of
Nirvana is palpable, which – given this album came out in 1994 – is totally
understandable.
The band
completely shifts gear with “Arlene,”
a murder ballad folk song about a man who kidnaps a local waitress and takes
her to an old cave. This song is dangerous because the tune is so catchy you
want to sing along, but if you do it in mixed company people will think you’re disturbed.
The song skillfully navigates around the gore, hinting at it without ever
spelling it out. Instead the focus is on the troubled way the protagonist sees
the world, and Arlene’s obvious terror at his unwanted advances. The petulant
way he sings:
“Arlene, you wouldn’t even let me
hold your hand
When I stopped you in the road
you just turned and ran.”
Clearly
implies we should be feeling sorry for him, but instead we just feel for Arlene’s
plight. The tension of how we’re being presented the facts by the killer and
how we’re receiving them is pure genius.
The song
styles vary, sometimes rocking out, sometimes light and folksy, and sometimes a
mix of the two, such as on “One Way Up”
where the song is principally a mournful folk song, but with a couple of feedback-filled
electric guitar solos in the middle of it all. The connection between Brett’s
mournful singing and the angst of the guitar ably captures externalized
confusion and internalized rage.
As ever,
chief writer Rennie Sparks is gifted with the turn of a phrase. On “Giant Ant” she fearlessly mixes the
beautiful and the troubling:
“Butterflies are monsters when
you look at them too close
And once you touch their wings
they’ll never fly again
Yellow is for buttercups and
streams of hot piss
Red is for I love you and hemorrhages”
Halfway
through the record, “Water Into Wine”
delivers a throwback thirties devotional. The Handsome Family play it straight
but in the context of the rest of the album it becomes ironic. They send up the
simplicity of the song simply by keeping a straight face and letting its proximity
to all the confusion and murder of the songs around it to serve as the counterpoint.
My love
for the Handsome Family is new but fierce, and I’ve bought so many of their
albums in a short span it will take some time to fully grok their body of work.
In this light, I’m happy that the first two albums I’ve reviewed were their
first two. “Milk and Scissors” was the beginning of the sound that would
endure. “Odessa” showcases their range, and how their career could have gone in
almost any direction, because good writing is good writing; whether the guitar
is plugged in or not is an afterthought.
Best
tracks: Here’s
Hopin’, Arlene, One Way Up, Giant Ant, Everything that Rises Must Converge, The
Last, Moving Furniture Around
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