Customer Reviews

In the Air

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

'Through The Trees' should have warned us. Branches rustled without a breath of wind: song-birds fell silent and strange black clouds darkened the sun: I felt a chill run through my room but there was nowhere to run that did not suddenly appear touched with melancholy. Still, this could all have been an aberation. Maybe just a fluke coming together of two currents that for the brief duration of 13 unspeakeably beautiful, haunting songs, created something quite unique and terrible. However, 'In the Air'is like waking from the dream to find you are still dreaming. Heavens, the back cover of the CD case should have been sufficient warning to us alone! People, think carefully before buying these new songs. How much do you value your view on the world? How much beauty can you take. I met Rennie Sparks a few weeks ago after their gig in Edinburgh and asked her what happens to Poor Lenore (track 7) after the song. Lenore has been carried to the top of a dead tree (where the heartbroken go) by crows. This really mattered to me. At first Rennie denied knowing the end of the story. Then, picking up the desperate look in my eyes, took hold of my hand and said, 'Well, yes, maybe in the end she does get down from that tree'. This, and a set that had the audience shuddering and laughing in equal measure, left me so blissful that I floated from the theatre. For a few hours, I was fooled. A few hours remembering the tender way she cradled her autoharp, before the stark outline of a leafless tree against the night sky shook me back to the reality of the Handsomes lyrical word. Lenore doesn't make it down from that tree. She's there still; at least her ghost is, waiting to sing its sad lament to any traveller accidentally wandering down that dark, damp path. Her hair whispers in the wind as the snow begins to fall and her mouth, endlessly, fills with blood. The Handsome Family stand utterly alone in the world. Leave behind everything you thought you knew and lie down in the dark rolling sea. When you get to the bottom, they will kiss you to sleep. Thank you Rennie and Brett.

No words describe how beautiful this album plays. Hopeful, sombre, bright, dark, frigid and beautiful, horrifying, vicious, vibrant, velour covered with black tar and sun stained on, whatever. Brett and Rennie Sparks have created the first true lyrical and musical masterpiece of the new century, decade, god, the millenium. Picking up where "Through The Trees" left off, Brett's musical pallete takes on a slightly brighter mood this time around to add mask to Rennie's viciously vivid lyrics. What allow's for postive melancholic balance is Rennie's ability to tell oddly beautiful stories within the words of the song. "The Sad Milkman" may be the first great countrypopfolk song written this side of the new millenium. An alternative earlier version of this Sparks original also appears on Sally Timms recent 1999 Bloodshot gem, "Cowboy Sally's Twilight Laments...For Lost Buckaroos." For those seeking something very rewarding in the year 2000, start here. "In the Air" is drop dead gorgeous pop with a touch of everything rooted in traditional country and folk. Mmmm.

Songs to sit on a screened-in porch with your gal and drink spiked lemonade by. This album has the feel of an endless summer evening full of sweat, mosquitos, and of course, blood. Timelessly haunting, lyrical and lovely. Spooky romance at its best.

A friend was telling me recently how she keeps bumping into her ex, who is now homeless and living on the streets. She even saw him on television one night being interviewed by the police because he had witnessed a murder---at the park he was living in. Seems like this guy will be haunting her forever from afar. I was thinking "this sounds like the plot of a Handsome Family song."

I came to the Handsome Family via Through The Trees--a very good CD--but In The Air just blows me away. The songs are haunting and melodic, simple melodies played with standard c/w instrumentation. The lively title song would sound right at home on a Johnny Cash album. Brett Sparks has the best voice on the alt.country scene right now. He and his wife Rennie are the entire band here, playing all the instruments, so first time listeners may be underwhelmed at first at the no-frills production and the solitude that lurks under the surface. What is amazing is Brett's ability to create beautiful soundscapes to accompany Rennie's tales of obsession and dysfunction. More, please.

This newsest collection of songs by Rennie and Brett Sparks (aka. The Handsome Family) are some of the best yet. From the beautiful and peaceful album opener "Don't Be Scared" to the tension-filled "In The Air", from the sadly haunting "So Much Wine" to the Paranoia of "When That Helicopter Comes", these are some powerfully dark folk songs that stick with you for a long time after listening to them.

Brett's deep resonating baritone vocals sing the dark folk poetry written by his wife Rennie with mesmerizing clarity and power. This duo creates some of the best beautifully haunting music I have heard in a long time.

I've had the pleasure to see the Handsome's play live several times, and to meet the Sparks. They are no disappointment. They create beautiful music mixed with dark and twisted lyrics. But as they sing on "A Beautiful Thing"..."It's only natural to want to kill a beautiful thing", and they write stories that lay to rest all those hauntingly beautiful melodies of theirs.

Five stars...I'd give it more if I could tear some stars out of the sky...but I can't quite reach.

This is a superb country / folk album which takes the everyday and the banal and places them in dark and unsettling settings.

Despite the macabre backdrops there is a twisted and superb humour to be found in places that prevents depression setting in. My favourites are "The Sad Milkman", "So Much Wine" and "Poor, Poor Lenore"

I am not sure if Rennie's lyrics are the result of hours of intense agonising or spring easily and naturally from her mind, but which ever is the case they are wonderful. The deep resonating voice of Brett is perfect for the black images that the lyrics contain. The result of their partnership is this beautifully crafted album.

It takes skilled craftsmanship to update and modernize the lyrics of traditional American folk songs without losing the song's integrity, and that is what "The Handsome Family" have done on "In The Air", a collection of Americana folk songs with a New Milennium bent. Such is the history of folklore, each storyteller lending his own version of familiarality to the story based on tradition and belief, and these songs are as genuine and sincere as the most beloved renditions. "The Sad Milkman" takes the wanderlust of "On Top of Old Smoky" and gives it a decidedly perverse human desire for The Moon crossing a mountain top over a loved one's grave. Religious symbolism is replaced with a familiar object in "When That Helicopter Comes", where avenging saints marching in, clouds of joy, and such themes are seen as an Industrial Age, life-saving helicopter fluttering in the air. The Gospel influenced "Grandmother Waits For You", remains as mournful and hopeful as the saddest folk lament while leaving it's religious root of belief in an afterlife planted in the ground. These songs are so stirring, so familiar, I only wish the instruments were allowed to continue a little longer after the vocals end to keep that sweet melody in my ear. Maybe that's what keeps me returning to "In The Air".

Excellent and unique music that shines in a rotten world of mass marketed sexy boy radio [stuff]. Goth country describes this. Imagine old style country meets Tori Amos and Tom Waits.

Husband-wife duo Brett and Rennie Sparks are a highly effective team. Rennie writes the lyrics and Brett sings the leads. His voice is a deeply satisfying baritone, mellow and smooth. Her lyrics are...allow me a bit of seeming hyperbole here: Rennie is one of the unsung poets of this century. Their music is slightly hard to characterize. Some of the songs on this album are really country sounding (In the Air, Grandmother Waits for You) some more old-timey bluegrassy (Up Falling Rock Hill, When the Helicopter Comes) while others are a bit harder to characterize (Poor, Poor Lenore, Lie Down). But regardless of which categories the songs strain and stretch and reimagine, the quality of the music and lyrics is absolutely stellar. My favorite song on the album is So Much Wine:

Listen to me Butterfly
There's only so much wine
You can drink
In one life
But it will never be enough
To save you from
The bottom of your glass

This is a gorgeous album, sad, quirky, weird, forlorn, but so so listenable. Don't miss this one!
In the Air

Brett and Rennie Sparkes are the Flannery O'Conners of alternative music in the USA.