Sunday 20 January 2019

Log #121 - The Twilight World Of The Handsome Family

Eddy Bamyasi


Handsome Family - Twilight
Handsome Family - Through The Trees
Miles Davis - Panthalassa
Talk Talk - Spirit Of Eden
Whiskeytown - Strangers Almanac
Santana - Caravanserai


It just struck me how the Miles Davis, Santana and Talk Talk albums are surprisingly similar.

The Talk Talk album is gorgeous. It has become a bit of an underground classic over the years. Talk Talk, if you remember, were a pop band of the new romantic age; they scored a few single hits and appeared on Top Of The Pops in the early 80s. Then suddenly, presumably after their success had granted chief Mark Hollis the time and budget to follow his true calling, the band came out with something altogether different.

Spirit of Eden (their 4th album, released in 1988) consisted of extended pieces of largely instrumental music that bordered upon prog, jazz, and ambience. Bizarrely the record company (EMI), typically shortsighted, later sued the band for releasing work that was not "commercially satisfactory"! Where have we heard that before?

In any case the band had the last laugh (their final album released in 1991 was entitled Laughing Stock) with Spirit of Eden now critically acclaimed and even recognised as an earlier pioneer of "post-rock".

Post-rock? Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mogwai, Tortoise, Radiohead, Stereolab, Sigur Ros, Mono, 65 Days Of Static, Sounds Of The Lid, Explosions In The Sky...

The Santana album here is also their fourth. Here they move from a more "singles" approach from their first three albums - nicely summarised on their best Greatest Hits compilation - to something more progressive and expansive.

From the sleeve notes: Originally released in 1973, Caravanserai marked a creative turning point for Santana. Six years of phenomenal success over three albums and extensive tours, this album would represent an expanding of the band's musical scope. Caravanserai takes fans on a harmonic and spiritual odyssey through jazz. A true document of crystalline imaginative vision, Caravanserai is a milestone in the history of Santana.

The Miles Davis album consists of a bunch of remixes by Bill Laswell of previous tunes. There are four extended tracks from the early 70s era Miles and as such are concentrated on his jazz-rock fusion material. It works well as a standalone album.

I've offered up two albums from the peak Handsome Family period which I see spanning the turn of the millennium with Through The Trees (1998), In The Air (2000) and Twilight (2001).

My threesome with couple Brett and Renee Sparks started on hearing Weightless Again on a classic Uncut Americana cover CD I've mentioned before

Probably the greatest free CD ever given away with a magazine

The music is mainly the responsibility of hubby Brett but the lyrics are written by Renee who also writes short stories. 

The songs are a mix of the macabre;

So the young girl pierced her lily-white breast
Her blood poured over dark weeds
A silver dagger through her burning heart
Cold as the wind in the trees

The surreal;

There are birds in the darkness
That douse electrical fires
Flaring up in nursing homes
And the bedrooms of blind men
Birds you cannot see

The sad:

My ghost drives around with a bag of dead fish
Falling neutrinos drift through the trees
He staggers and reels, runs up credit card bills
And clogs up the toilet with bottles of pills
Here in the bipolar ward
If you shower you get a gold star

The unexpected;

Chicago is where the woman downstairs
Starved herself to death last summer
Her boyfriend Ted ate hot dogs and wept
With the gray rats out on the fire escape.
She died in June weighing 82
Her boyfriend went back to New York
The cops wandered through her dusty rooms
One of them stole her TV

And the amusing;

So long to my dog Snickers
Who ate Christmas tinsel
So long to Mr. Whiskers
Who jumped out of a window
And to the family of gerbils
Who chewed out of the cage
And the little brown rabbit
I ran over by mistake

You don't have to search long for great lyrics from Renee. Every song is a masterpiece of bizarre storytelling. I'm sure her short stories would be the same.

Never a band to reach much commercial success the Handsome Family did nevertheless score an indirect hit with the theme tune to the chilling first season of True Detective:




Finally a quick word on the Whiskeytown album.  Like The Handsome Family this group were at the forefront of the emergence of americana and alt-country in the mid to late 90s. They were fronted by Ryan Adams who disbanded the band after only 3 albums in 2000 and moved on to solo fame. Strangers Almanac is considered an early classic of the genre.





About The Author

Eddy Bamyasi

Eddy is a music writer from Brighton, England, named after a Can record. Each Sunday he logs and reviews the albums that happen to be in his vintage Pioneer 6-CD magazine changer, amongst other things.

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