Records: The Handsome Family's Through the Trees

By Peter Jaros

Are we supposed to take them seriously? Kitschy cover art and canned pedal steel licks tell me no. So do lyrics like "Alone, I took to drinking bottles of cheap whiskey and staggering through the backwoods killing snakes with a sharpened stick." And never mind that with little creativity, these comely kinfolk's names can be rearranged to spell Bertt and Ernnie. Nevertheless, a tragic element somehow filters its way through this big joke. Brett Sparks's drive-in-sized vocals conjure up nothing so much as Jello Biafra on Quaaludes, but once in a while his Chicago cowboy voice penetrates. In the opener, "Weightless Again," sincerity permeates the buttery layers of irony and self-consciously witty lyrics. Its refrain--"This is why people OD on pills and jump from the Golden Gate Bridge./ Anything to feel weightless again," delivered with deadpan bombast, invokes a complete loss of context and stays catchy too.

Still, only a few songs are successful. The real allegiances of The Handsome Family lie not in the country canon, but in the ridiculous story-songs of Captain Beefheart or Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 (or in a tamer vein, They Might Be Giants), though the Family misses out on those groups' sonic innovation. While Through the Trees has its moments, it still makes me want to wish The Handsome Family "Better luck next genre." (Carrot Top)

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