The Handsome Family

The couple Brett and Rennie Sparks give a contemporary vision of traditional country and are inspired by bluegrass (and especially murder ballads), dusty folk tunes, >John Coltrane, Hank Williams, cellar noises, strangers at crossroads and abandoned cemeteries. It produces a unique sound that they describe as “a little bit creepy and a little bit country.”

Wonderful stories are played to the pleasant rhythm of The Handsome Family. Before she started writing lyrics, Rennie Sparks was a fiction author. That immediately explains why the songs are rarely written in the traditional verse-chorus-strophe form. Their latest album 'Last Days of Wonder' was one of the ten best American albums of 2006, according to Mojo. The CD is an ode to the small miraculous moments of every day. Listen to The Handsome Family and be overwhelmed by the dazzling beauty of everyday details...

"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)