THE HANDSOME FAMILY, DANIEL KNOX
CLUB CONGRESS
Wednesday, July 29
With easy beats, soothing harmonies and a twang brushed with plenty
of Southwestern grit, the Handsome Family play a timeless brand of
country music—if not exactly traditional, it’s certainly pure,
free of alt or rock hybridization.
Brett and Rennie Sparks, the husband-and-wife team fronting this
band, have been at it for more than 20 years, building a reputation for
dark and brooding storytelling.
While the Handsome Family still trades in the country music of dark
abysses, snakebites, family fights on Christmas and dusty pickup
trucks, Wednesday’s show highlighted songs from Honey Moon, the
band’s newest album. And the Handsome Family’s freshest batch of tunes
have a sort of swelling beauty that perfectly fits the Sparks’ classic
male-female harmonies, whether they’re love songs about insects or
insect songs about love.
Perhaps fending off some of the sweetness of the new songs, Rennie
Sparks joked between songs that “sometimes people get a skin rash when
they see us; sometimes it’s blurred vision.”
“A Thousand Diamond Rings” is about the pawnshops, neon signs and
wrinkled faces of their hometown, and finding beauty in spite of it
all: “Even the broken glass shattered in the street shines like a
thousand diamond rings.”
The band dipped into older songs late in the set, including the
first song they wrote together, “Arlene,” from 1995’s Odessa,
and an encore of “I Know You Are There” from 2001’s Twilight,
with an opening line as dark as they come: “When the rope of death
strangles, and dark waters roar and foam.”
Opener Daniel Knox—solo on the piano or leading a sharp combo
with bass and brushed drums—has a style that starts lounge-y and
veers toward the theatrical, with occasional flourishes from a kazoo he
pulled from behind his ear.
His skewed and darkly humorous lyrics give songs about gambling,
murder and a porno booth in Indiana plenty of unexpected twists.
“Ghostsong,” about a dead guy eternally harassing the object of his
affection, is as spooky as it is funny.
The fact that Knox has a golden croon straight out of midcentury
Hollywood makes his act—and lyrics like, “Darling, I hate you
with a kiss”—that much more captivating.
This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2009.