This is my second Handsome Family
review in the last three albums. What are the odds? Well, there are about 130
albums in my “new album” section and ten of those were Handsome Family, so the
odds were 1 in 13. Math isn’t all that mysterious at this level. Higher math –
now that stuff will mess you up.
Disc 1047 is…Last Days of Wonder
Artist: The
Handsome Family
Year of Release: 2006
What’s up with the Cover? This is the last of six albums
in a row where the Handsome Family put nature shots on their covers. I guess
you could call this picture “the last day of wonder” if wonder is Mother
Nature. The liner notes only indicate that this picture was “found in a hollow log.” I really hope
that’s true.
How I Came To Know It: This was just one of many
Handsome Family albums I discovered in a glut of music, after I ordered their
entire discography direct from the band. Thanks Handsome Family!
How It Stacks Up: I have 12 Handsome Family albums. Of those 12,
I put “Last Days of Wonder” in at a respectable 7th.
Ratings: 4 stars
The last
couple of Handsome Family reviews focused on their early sound, but on “Last
Days of Wonder” we get to see the mature band, with seven albums under their
belt. Here they have fully developed their weird, troubled and totally
compelling blend of folk and rock for our listening pleasure.
Gone are
the crunchy guitar riffs and feedback of early efforts, replaced with easygoing
country beats, lilting melodies and richly detailed folk ballads. Along the
way, the husband and wife team of Rennie and Brett Sparks have found a full and
rounded sound that fills the room despite the relatively sparse arrangements.
I was impressed
anew with the production values on the album after I read in the liner notes
that it was put together in their home studio by Brett Sparks using “a Mac and lots of wires and microphones.”
I have a feeling they are deliberately selling themselves short, because this
is a far cry from lo-fi. Along the way Sparks has become as skilled a producer
as he is a musician.
Interesting
decisions abound, including a jazzy trombone on “Tesla’s Hotel Room” and what I suspect is a Theremin on “These Golden Jewels.” The latter of these
songs, with its vaudevillian circus show feel and unorthodox syncopation sounds
like it was inspired by the future ghost of Tom Waits. It wasn’t a favourite
for me musically, but it was hard not to like on the grounds of creativity
alone.
“Tesla’s Hotel Room” tells of the life
and death of Nikola Tesla, giving specific detail to the life of one of history’s
great inventors. It is a brilliant example of Rennie Sparks’ exceptional talent
as a writer, as she weaves his inventions, diet and cause of death all into a
single stanza:
“But Tesla grew thin eating only
Saltines
Going days in his lab without any
sleep
Dreaming of God as an X-ray beam,
he was
Hit by a cab while crossing the
street.”
Well,
technically Tesla lives for a while after the accident, but don’t worry, Rennie
covers that as well before she’s done.
On “After We Shot the Grizzly” she writes of
a dystopian future, and a last band of humans trying to make it through the
wilderness “after the airship crashed.”
What airship? Hey, it’s a short story – they start best in the middle of the
action. The song gets dark from there, including adding the devouring of the
pack horses, the killing a tiny antelope and the death of the titular grizzly.
Then they pack on fever and disease, internal strife and in the end I believe
it descends into cannibalism.
I tried
to describe this song’s plot to my coworkers over a coffee today and their
reaction was “that’s all in one song?” It sure is, and they even make it a bit
of a creepy love song along the way. Such is the power of poetry, my friends.
As ever,
the Handsome Family are masters of the unreliable narrator. On “Beautiful William” the narrator can’t
understand why William inexplicably disappears one day. However, given that the
narrator later teams up with “Polly from Red River” and “Rose from Green Falls”
to break into his house and trash the place, we can hardly blame William for
making himself scarce. He’s probably fleeing them.
Brett
Sparks may not write the words, but he sells them beautifully, with his rich
and airy voice telling the story like some kind of ancient troubadour recanting
tales around a campfire or tavern hearth.
Songs
like “Beautiful William” and “Tesla’s Hotel Room” are appropriately somber
affairs, and the drunken outings on “Flapping
Your Broken Wings” (delivered with a touch of mania) and “Bowling Alley Bar” (delivered with a
drunken sway) further demonstrate the band knows just what feeling to infuse
into the music to score the action at hand.
When I
rolled this album I was a bid trepidatious. After all, I’d just reviewed one of
their records, and a third only 30 albums before that. Would I have anything else
to say? Fortunately the Handsome Family never fail to deliver a fresh set of
inspirational tales, with a perfectly selected musically accompaniment to drive
the story home.
Best
tracks: Your
Great Journey, Tesla’s Hotel Room, After We Shot the Grizzly, Flapping Your
Broken Wings, Beautiful William, All the Time in Airports
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