The Handsome Family, Twilight (Carrot Top) 9+
Handsome Family's third album Through The Trees was probably their darkest, coming after a flurry of emotional turmoil and breakdowns. In The Air featured black, Goreyesque humor, while Twilight, Brett and Rennie Sparks' latest, contains romantic yearning for nature. It's not surprising that just after completing the album, Rennie had the disturbing urge to cuddle a gigantic feral rat, causing the couple to flee the urban landscape of Chicago for the stark, desert settings in New Mexico where they are now happily training rattlesnakes to pickpocket. Critters populate the album -- deer, pigeons, birds, beetles, fish, flying buffalo, dogs, rabbits, lizards, more birds -- like woodland creatures surrounding Snow White, except in The Handsome Family's surreal world she's clad in black and combat boots, and she's packin' heat. More hapless deaths occur, such as old ladies freezing to death ("Cold, Cold, Cold"), and a white dog leads one to the afterlife "across the lake of fire to the silver shore." It may not be a happy place, as Brett regretfully imagines that all the animals and bugs he killed as a child are waiting "on the other side" for him to wreak their vengeance ("So Long"). Not all the animals are hostile, however. In "Birds You Cannot See," they save people from electrical fires, steer boats past icebergs and save children stuck in wells. "There Is A Sound" and "No One Fell Asleep Alone" could alternatively be creepy or hopeful. Like the previous albums, Twilight was created on a G3 using Pro Tools, with little variation in Brett's soothing croon or the creeping one-two, one-two rhythms. Certainly it's another handsome addition to the Family cannon, but a new approach to recording, perhaps with a live band, would shake things up and keep them a vital musical force.
