Ever since True Detective season 1, which used Far From Any Road as their intro theme song, I've been a big fan of the Handsome Family band. Of course they've been around for a long time before that, but I had no idea they existed - just like Alabama 3 until their Sopranos theme song wide-debut. Anyways, Handsome Family's music has been described as alternative country. I've heard them called "Hank Williams meets Edgar Allen Poe." They're a duo, married couple Brett & Rennie Sparks.
Their style is haunting and beautiful and sometimes rousing music, always with a folksy country backbone, but above all I absolutely love their lyrics. I tend to listen to music with a writer's ear, getting joy from the literal poetry of the song again and again no matter how many times I've heard it. Even if I've memorized it, the performance and emotional acting of the singer re-tunes me to it again and again.
With Handsome Family, they not only create lyrical poetry but damned good stories with a crazy thematic power to them. Here's three songs that continue to blow me away in this regard:
In Weightless Again the metaphor of the "Indians" who "forgot how to start a fire" travels throughout the narrative, just as the narrator describes himself (or herself) and his partner traveling throughout the forests of California. The chorus subtly implies the narrator contemplating suicide over the loss of the romantic feelings with his partner. It's never overt, always wistful and freely associated. Just beautifully constructed as a piece of poetic flash fiction.
So Much Wine feels more classically structured like a country song, but again employs powerfully simple similes (the dying meteors, the sad shining eyes). Someone wouldn't normally look at a shooting star and think, "there goes something dying in the sky" -- but this narrator's life is so wrecked by the person they love constantly self-destructing, that they're projecting -- a beautiful thing is now beautiful because of it's self-destruction. And then, to remember the person's eyes - the key to the soul, as if they were burning the life of their eyes out. So compact and effective. And the chorus... amazing.
Drunk By Noon is one of my favorites. Every line feels like it could be the title of a short story. See the chorus:
And if my life was as long as the moon's
I'd still be jealous of the sun
And if my life lasted only one day
I'd still be drunk by noon
The song seems to be about this person, painfully frozen in place, terrified and excited for death and wholly aware of it all the time. At once comforted by their nihilism while also being fixated on it. And they infuse it with this rollicking country rhythm, almost like they're darkly laughing the whole way through. Brilliant and honestly terrifying.
I might say it's less Hank Williams - Edgar Allen Poe, more Johnny Cash - Denis Johnson. The Handsome Family doesn't mess around!
