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The Handsome Family/Daniel Knox
The Globe 31/08/22
I was excited to see The Handsome Family. I don't know many of their
tunes, but I like what I've heard so far and I'm in the perfect mood
for their eerie western Gothic folk country. This is one of those
gigs that has been delayed for two years, thanks to the pandemic.
Settling down with a pint in Cardiff's cavernous globe, the support
act Daniel Knox takes the stage. He sounds like Erik Satie jamming
with The Magnetic Fields, and almost immediately wins me over, looking
like a benevolent, grey-haired, prodigiously bearded wizard peering
over his keyboard at the medium-sized but appreciative and well-behaved
audience.
He plays his own songs, which feel like they've been around for a
while, and are newly rediscovered - dryly deadpan, genuinely touching,
unsentimental but full of emotion, brilliantly subtle piano playing.
I also enjoy his stagecraft - as the set progresses, he crumples up
his lyric sheets and tosses them to the floor; a visual metaphor for
the sometimes frustrating process of songwriting, but also a good
visual gag. At one point he throws one of them at an audience member
in the front row. His stage presence is quite funny in a deadpan kind
of way, although I'm not sure why - he's just saying things in a normal
way but it's funny somehow.
Pic : Facebook
There's an entertaining moment involving a kazoo played in a bass
register which sounds like a bullfrog singing a jazz standard, and
a good impression of a theremin sung in falsetto during a song about
a ghost, which features a lyric describing a ghost as 'a breeze blowing
through town that nobody notices til something gets knocked down'.
Other highlights include a song comparing a particular episode of
Star Trek: The Next Generation to the Covid-19 pandemic - he tells
us that he spent most of the last couple of years obsessively watching
the series. He says 'I'm not going to tell you which episode, see
if you can figure out which one it is' - I haven't seen much of it
myself, but it makes me think of one I have seen - The Inner Light,
in which Picard loses his memories and lives an entire life on a strange
planet as a normal man.
After regaining his memories, the only connection he still has to
his previous life is a simple melody, which he can still remember
how to play on a small flute. That's the only connection he has to
his forgotten life, which turned out to just be an illusion. I find
this quite a poignant connection to make - if this is the episode
he's talking about!
Other parts of the set remind me particularly of Randy Newman - there's
a cheerily ironic ragtime number about the apocalypse; 'billboards
for my favourite show, syphilis and cancer', ending with some bitter
'ahahahaha' laugh-singing - although you can't quite tell if he's
crying or laughing.
The set ends with what Knox calls a 'love song for an asshole', and
I've been seriously charmed by his sincerity and effortlessly downbeat
melodicism. Haunting but funny songwriting. I'll definitely be listening
to his music when I get home.
A quick trip to the bar; then The Handsome Family unexpectedly appears
on the stage, with little fanfare. They start their set in a charmingly
shambolic fashion, mumbling something incoherent in gentle American
tones, then suddenly burst into song, sounding incredibly focused,
controlled and vibrant. The contrast is impressive.
The band are a husband and wife duo that have been going over 20 years,
with several albums to their name - on this occasion they are augmented
by a drummer and an electric guitar/pedal steel guitarist. They play
spectacularly well in a controlled yet raw style, the drummer carving
poetry from his kit, making every note means something. He taps a
few notes on a glockenspiel and an omnichord, adding some interesting
textures.
The bass player Rennie Sparks (one half of the husband/wife duo) thumps
out a confident backbeat on a Hofner bass and supplies a good portion
of the vocals. The electric guitarist conjures up crystalline, cinematic
images, at one point combining an E-bow with some fluttery delay effects
in an eerie pin-prick cluster, appropriate to the song which is called
'My Ghost'. Pedal steel guitar sounds amazing through guitar pedals,
by the way - that's something you don't hear enough.
The whole band plays for the song, like they know they won't be here
for long. The lead vocalist/acoustic guitarist Brett Sparks has an
affecting bass-baritone voice, haunting treacle-whiskey-diesel-jawbone-buzzsaw
rasp, slow and soothing as a stream trickling down a mountainside.
He walks a line between technique and unschooled catharsis.
It's a bit like Johnny Cash's later albums, Tom Waits' more mellow
later moments like 'Hold On' or 'Come On Up To The House', or Dylan's
2001 album "Love and Theft". Their music conjures a lost
America, tangled with vines of desperate, doomed love, darkly wry
humour, and cursed regret - neo-noir alt-folk, which you could call
'Americana', except that I find that genre tag a bit of an oversimplification.
A descriptor which seems to belong to a certain period in the 2000s
particularly, but this kind of dark country-folk, done right, should
have more of a timeless feel. There's a lot going on under the hood
of The Handsome Family.
Pic
Brian Blauser /Mountain Stage
Appalachian gospel-tinged outlaw country that seems
to exist outside of any particular time period, conjuring up a dreamlike
roadhouse saloon atmosphere. It reminds me of those surreal musical
scenes in David Lynch's Twin Peaks: The Return - seductive, saying,
low, sultry. Clearly a band with a respect for the art of storytelling
in songwriting.
Stark, southern gothic music, rattling with the bones of tradition,
sin and regret. Murder ballads, Cormac McCarthy, dead crows, crossroads,
trees like bones. They play my favourite song of theirs, 'My Sister's
Tiny Hands', and it's great - a haunting ballad about 'staggering
through the backwoods killing snakes with a sharpened stick'.
Apparently the band's Albuquerque house was used as a location in
the recent final season of Better Call Saul, a show I've been obsessed
with recently. It was covered with fake snow, despite actually being
in the middle of a desert. I can't think of a more appropriate connection
for the band.
Tom Emlyn
Thanks to Rob at Sonic PR for sorting this out
https://www.facebook.com/danielknoxmusic
https://handsomefamily.com/
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