The Beatles of American Folk - The Handsome Family

I certainly don't hear any "disdain" in their music...definitely "distance" (and yes sometimes even - god forbid - "ironic" distance) but not "disdain." They clearly love and understand folk music, they just don't waste much energy pretending that they are "folk." Good for them.

So, tell me what record would change my mind.

"Weightless Again"
"The Giant of Illinois"
"Don't Be Scared"
"Cold Cold Cold"
"Passenger Pigeons"
"Lie Down"
"A Beautiful Thing"
"So Much Wine"
"Amelia Earhart Vs. The Dancing Bear"
"All The TVs In Town"

Sometimes they're all I want to listen to. Then I get paranoid that anything I write will end up looking like a pale imitation of Rennie Sparks. My current favorite line:

"Like the screams of your Aunt Barbara, who went crazy in the 70's
Wrote poems to Jimmy Carter, but forgot to feed her kids"

POX:

"Weightless Again" (apparently Brett thought the lyrics "totally sucked")
"All the Time in Airports"
"Lake Geneva"
"Lie Down"
"Drunk By Noon"
"Amelia Earhart vs. the Dancing Bear"
"Birds You Cannot See" (this almost reduced me to tears a few nights ago, and it's one of their more optimistic songs)
"Cold Cold Cold"
"The Snow White Diner"
"Hunter Green"

Thread title blows, btw.

Absolutely amazing in small doses, but does anyone else find them a little monochromatic? When I want to hear them I tend to go to either the live album or the best of.

Bumping the thread to express gratitude to 2002 (!) Clyde for comparing The Handsome Family to TMBG (and rinsing out the horror of the thread title in turn)... in fact I'd go a step further and call Rennie Sparks & John Linnell kindred songwriters who've grokked (through the more musically adept halves of their duos) opposed genres -- American folk & synth-pop -- as filters for their deadpan whack. The similarity is uncanny. Q is, is this a superficial product of convergent evolution or do they share the same influences? Think they both read plain poetry? (Philip Larkin)

TMBG? WTF? Makes more sense than Beatles I suppose.

Anyhow, just released a music vid for their upcoming (Sept) LP:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvtmGU1Co4E

They've written so many great songs. The Handsome Family songbook will make an awesome collection some time in the distant future. Is Andrew Bird the only one who regularly covers them?

Saw them play in Fall River, Mass. a few years ago. There couldn't have been more than 40 people in the audience. Very disappointing turnout, but they were great.

Just read a story about them and this line made be chuckle: "Cult husband and wife duo Rennie and Brett Sparks rose to fame in 2015 after Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey picked their track 'Far From Any Road' as the theme to hit HBO TV show True Detective."

Rose to fame? Really?

Also the idea that an actor, even a lead one, decided on the show's theme tune is unlikely. Plus, it premiered in 2014.

Saw them last week, they introduced "Far From Any Road" with "many years ago, we were hanging out on Matthew McConaughey's yacht..."

The new album has a few overly familiar melodies and themes but "Underneath the falls" is the best thing I've heard from them in years.

I'm a fan but have found the last three albums a total snooze. But I also recognize that I'm not sure what I actually want or require from a new Handsome Family album in 2016.

Yeah, Last Days of Wonder was the last one that I really wanted to go back to, and it certainly had its flaws. They're always a treat live though. "Gold" on the new one is worth hearing as well.

Me too re: Last Days, and I love that one

I love their first 4 albums but after which they dropped off my radar. What's their best stuff since "In The Air"?

I've heard them all, and Last Days of Wonder is my favorite. Some of their greatest songs ("After We Shot The Grizzly," "Our Blue Sky," "Bowling Alley Bar") and very few skippers

Haven't connected with the last three for some reason. I don't know what I'm expecting from them, because I don't want them to radically change their sound or anything, but they've been at it long enough where you could probably pretty easily write a Handsome Fam parody song by now

Some good stuff from the post In the Air albums, I'd say Last Days and Twilight are the strongest:

The Snow White Diner
Cold Cold Cold
All the TVs in Town
Sleepy
All The Time In Airports
After We Shot The Grizzly
Hunter Green
Darling My Darling
Gold
Underneath the Falls
Tiny Tina

I'm not sure I actually listened to Wilderness, and Honey Moon is sketchy in my memory except that "Darling My Darling" is a real cute song about mantises and "The Loneliness of Magnets" is torturous to hear live. Listening to some of it on Spotify "Little Sparrows" sounds nice but there's not a lot that sticks besides the painful crooning songs.