HANDSOME FAMILY NEW ALBUM ‘WILDERNESS OUT 20TH MAY (CD/LP/DL)
Hey folks, the fantastic new album from The Handsome Family, their 9th album so far, entitled ‘Wilderness’, is out on Monday, with their UK tour starting this Thursday.
Wild animals, tall tales, and folk-lore from American history populate Wilderness – the 9th studio album from New Mexico’s Handsome Family. Recorded at home in Albuquerque and at the Wilco Loft in Chicago it’s a record that finds husband & wife duo Brett & Rennie Sparks blending Appalachian holler, psych-rock and Tin Pan Alley inspired melodies to conjure up a world where David Attenborough meets David Lynch in a Honky-Tonk bar at midnight.
The album explores the little-known enigmas of the natural world: immortal jellyfish, woodpecker tongues, dancing octopi, fly royalty, the secret language of crows, and mysterious ant spirals. Elsewhere we discover why the Sparks never take seaside vacations and learn all about compulsive window-smasher Mary Sweeney. It’s classic Handsome Family territory – twisted tales of the unexpected that may raise a smile but will also, thanks to Rennie’s knack for spinning a good yarn, leave you ever so slightly unsettled. But it’s not only the narrative that draws you deep into this zoological wonderland. From the opening bars of Flies to the album’s closer Wildebeest – a parlour-piano led hymn that somehow successfully manages to bring together Stephen Foster, hungry crocodiles and the unity of the wildebeest herd, Brett Sparks lays bear a succession of deceptively simple melodies and dexterous instrumentation that combine with his wife’s lyrics to a startlingly haunting effect and are delivered with a voice that glides between a Cash-like timbre and a southern high & lonesome plea.
And what songs they are. They have been feted by the likes of Ringo Starr and covered by artists such as Jeff Tweedy, Cerys Matthews, Christy Moore and Andrew Bird. In a career that spans twenty years they’ve toured the world in their own charmingly DIY fashion – one car, one hotel room, one stage…. night after night after night – and in that time they’ve performed as a duo, with a band and have had onstage collaborations with such folk-royalty as Eliza Carthy, country legend Charlie Louvin and indie-kings like Nick Cave and Jarvis Cocker. In each and every instance they’ve more than held their own, thanks in the main to their songs – a series of unique and wondrous compositions that, as Jeff Tweedy once said, are the “product of two beautiful brains”.
UK TOUR – MAY 2013
16 – LIVERPOOL, Kazimier
17 – MANCHESTER, Ruby Lounge
18 – GLASGOW, The Arches
19 – GATESHEAD, Old Town Hall
21 – SHEFFIELD, Greystones (sold out)
22 – LEEDS, Brudenell Social Club
24 – KIRBYMOORSIDE, The Band Room (sold out)
25 – HEBDEN BRIDGE, The Trades Club
26 – LEICESTER, The Musician
28 – NORWICH, Arts Centre
29 – LONDON, Islington Assembly Hall
30 – BRISTOL, The Fleece
31 – OXFORD, The Bullingdon
NPR ‘Woodpecker’ video premiere:
★★★★ UNCUT ★★★★ MOJO ★★★★½ THE SUN ★★★★ NO DEPRESSION
“Twenty years into their musical career…Brett and Rennie remain on an extraordinary creative roll..” – Uncut
“Brett’s deep bow-saw of a voice has never sounded so sonorous” – Mojo
“Wilderness should deservedly scoop the same critical plaudits as previous ‘Family outings, the latest entry into the band’s extensive canon of outstanding work.” – Pennyblackmusic
“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
“Their new recording brought to mind a focus and refinement to the weirdness and the weirder they get the more I like ‘um.”- Kurt Wagner (Lambchop)
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