Honey Moon
Album | The Handsome Family
Warmer, fuzzier, but still reassuringly weird
How much of a reputation do husband-and-wife alt-country duo Brett and Rennie Sparks have for being shadow-dwelling, doom-mongering practitioners of the musically macabre? Let's put it this way: if you Google the Albuquerque duo's name alongside "Gomez and Morticia," the first thing you see won't simply be comparisons between the two, it'll be references to how many comparisons have been made between the two. So the fact that Honey Moon finds the Handsome Family brightening their outlook a bit is no small thing. The spare, Johnny Cash-derived country sound that's always been the Sparks' trademark remains unchanged, but Rennie's lyrics, delivered by Brett in his increasingly flexible baritone, combine the customary creepy imagery with relatively upbeat sentiments. When Brett sings "I will bark like a dog in your arms" in "Wild Wood," it's meant to be a statement of passion. Broken glass on the street shines like "A Thousand Diamond Rings," and even when the narrator of "Petrified Forest" is stumbling alone at night on the rocks, the foremost thing in his mind is "when you held me in your beautiful arms." Welcome to the warmer, fuzzier, but still reassuringly weird Handsome Family.
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