THE HANDSOME FAMILY
Last Days of Wonder

by RICK KANE

THE Handsome Family is an acquired taste. Like beer, once acquired, it will pay you forward until your great journey begins. Beer, sadly, may also produce such things as breakdowns, estrangement, dislocations and suburban decay. Happily, beer also contributes to events and action fondly remembered and recalled across lifetimes. Interestingly, The Handsome Family covers the kinds of themes I have just described in broad and minute detail over the 12 songs that are contained in their latest record Last Days of Wonder.

It is their well-observed record of human behaviour and insight into the compromised nature of the human condition within seemingly ordinary stories that is The Handsome Family's great strength, as well as the depth of language, humour and pathos Rennie Sparks employs to drive the stories. They have some enjoyable tunes going on too.

In the song Our Blue Sky singer Brett Sparks ruminates on the question of whether you could "love god if he didn't love you more than rivers, snakes or wind" and if you "could share heaven with black buzzing flies" to an almost innocent child like nursery rhyme tune. It doesn't get more simple or profound than that.

Another song After We Shot the Grizzly narrates the macabre journey of a group of travelers left with nothing but their wits. This song, replete with skulls and rafts made of human skin, could have come from Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music compilation of music from the first few decades of the 20th century.

Flapping Your Broken Wings begins with "I can still see you there in your grass stained underwear". This time the story concerns a drunken couple who break into a golf course for some fun and stuff. The irrelevance and irreverence of their escapade is in fact the joy of the song.

For me, the key to the album is in understanding the link and resonance between the first song, Your Great Journey and the last, Somewhere Else to Be. Both weave mystical and magical charm around themes of death, the universe, chance and human touch. And in some way tie the record together as a chronicle of the ills, misfortune, small moments and majesty of ordinary people living in such uncertain times. I'll leave that to you, I can't do all the work for you. If you do get it, so to speak, the delights of THF will open up for you and you will acquire the taste. If you like beer, have a drink while listening to THF, it will only makes the experience even better.

13 August 2006

australianrules.com.au

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THE HANDSOME FAMILY Last Days of Wonder

THE HANDSOME FAMILY
Last Days of Wonder