Singing Bones

Handsome Family | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 7, 2003)
• Original Release Date: 2003
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Carrot Top Records
• ASIN: B0000CD5FC
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #114,751 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

On their most adventurous album yet & their best since 1998's "Through the Trees," Brett & Rennie Sparks have outdone themselves. Songs about haunted Wal-Marts, lovers who chase the fire in streetlights, very VERY deep holes & the shadows that whisper inside of modern office building all give full voice to an eerily hopeful edge that has seeped into their music over the last year or so. A surprisingly low body count album, or as low as we're likely to get, is meant to rip a tear int he veil between this world & the next. Musically, Brett's weeks and months in their home studio show though. He learned pedal steel & musical saw & his compositions are embellished w/trumpet, mandolin, bowed bass & violin from local Albuquerque musicians. While "Twilight" was almost universally hailed from Uncut, Mojo, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Marcus & Christgau, critics & listeners will be purely ecstatic over "Singing Bones!"

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rennie Sparks is the Gabriel Garcia Marquez of alt-country, March 14, 2004

By 

S. Gustafson "Holy Roman Emperor" (New Albany, IN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Singing Bones (Audio CD)

What else can I say? Her lyrics contrast visionary, sometimes somewhat morbid settings with closely observed, incongruous detail. My favourite narrative from this record is "Song of a Hundred Toads," in which a string of disasters ---

Round a hairpin turn
The wagon tumbled o'er
And down the jagged rocks
Bill fell with all I owned.

--- leaves a man stranded in a desert, only as his final night falls to be greeted by the epiphany of the title: the song of a hundred toads. "The Bottomless Hole" strikes an H. P. Lovecraft note, but Lovecraft with a difference: it seems it's -useful- to have a bottomless pit behind your barn, even if you end up obsessed with the urge to explore it.

Moving to New Mexico seems to have added some new, somewhat more upbeat "western" seeming rhythms and chord changes to Brett's music. There are occasional touches of Spanish guitars, and on one song even a trumpet. The musical saw on "24 Hour Store" is another instrumental highlight.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Back to their roots...in a way, October 29, 2003

By 

Zach Brockhouse (Las Vegas, NV USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Singing Bones (Audio CD)

Any Handsome Family album is worth your while. This is their first album since leaving Chicago and moving to the Southwest. The change is noticeable in the fact that they seemed to have gone back to simpler melodies and arrangements.Subject mater is still vitage stuff from this brilliant duo. Overall, it seems like an old fashioned Handsome Family album. Gets better with every listen. My current favorite is the haunting, "A Shadow Underneath." If you are already a fan, you won't be let down.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Suprise, November 3, 2005

By 

Andrew Johnstone (Morrinsville, New Zealand.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Singing Bones (Audio CD)

I came across the Handsome Family by way of an interview on National Radio(Radio New Zealand). I pulled into the motel car park dead tired after driving for 16 long hours, yet remained sitting in the car mesmerised by the strange and evocative music pouring into the car from the rain sodden night. Once in the motel room I logged onto Amazon and purchased Singing Bones.
The next morning I opened my eyes and watched the wardrobe sway around in a dreamlike fashion, much like the music I had heard the night before. Later on the news I discovered that I had experienced an earthquake. In the end it was my wife who claimed ownership of the CD, and she has played it constantly ever since and our 6yr old daughter knows the words to all the songs. What a great discovery, fresh pure music, greatly cherished by this family.