Weightless again (Through The Trees - Handsome Family)

Member Name: caro

Product:	Through The Trees - Handsome Family
Date:	27/06/01 (67 review reads)
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This album is a blend of early country-inspired music and twisted lyrics, all presented with a deceptive simplicity. Comparisons have been made to the Carter Family, the Louvin Brothers and Hank Williams, although the Handsome Family are by no means derivative copies. Indeed, there are many contemporary influences and elements to the music, not least the drum machine used throughout this album, which inspired the epithet ‘Countronica’.

Imagery ranges from the urban (fire escapes, el trains, fibreglass castles) to the rural (not prettified nature but an environment where new green shoots, plump blackberries and silver forests are counterbalanced by horses’ skulls, poison snakes, falling trees and burning woods). Disturbing and bleak images (“a stream of orange lizards poured out from the bone-white mouth”; “lounge chairs thrown into the empty pool and a dog chained to a tree”; “the red worms circle like sharks”) mingle with the traditional (“I kissed your apple lips”, It takes away my aching thoughts and cleanses all my sin”, “here in the silvery mist”). This combination is really compelling, worth listening to over and over. Although the lyrics are dark, the songs have something magical about them: it’s hard to pin down but seems to lie in the combination of black humour, rich imagery and the intricate way the music interplays with the lyrics.

It is hard to select particular tracks for mention, but to do justice to all thirteen would make this review unbearably long. I will therefore limit myself to some personal favourites. The first track, ‘Weightless Again’, was the first Handsome Family song I ever heard and is a good introduction to their music. The lyrics combine a dying relationship, South American Indians and suicide (but it’s not as depressing as it sounds, honest!). They succeed in making these connections in a deceptiv
ely simple way which means that listening to the song is a pleasure, not a confusing or complex intellectual exercise; but that there is also plenty to discover if you take the time to pay close attention.

Another favourite is ‘Cathedrals’, a traditional guitar-led country tune with lyrics moving from the cathedral in Cologne (“1,000 stone-carved saints hang like icicles, but icicles don’t take 1,000 years to die”) to a fibreglass castle in Wisconsin out of season. Immortality through architecture is questioned: “everyone of us is swept away like breadcumbs. What comfort does it bring, soaring towers left behind?” Love is not found when we go seeking it, but can be stumbled upon by accident: “Hoping to feel love under the icicles. All we did was drink in an empty bar. But, stumbling drunk we crawled back to our motel room and I fell against you and felt your beating heart.”

‘The Giant of Illinois’ could be a pure comedy song, as it starts “The giant of Illinois died from a blister on his toe”. Instead, it is sung with deadpan seriousness bordering on wistfulness, lightened and lifted by backing vocals from Jeff Tweedy. The lyrics move quickly into delirium, the killing of a swan, and fear of a clear blue sky. The giant knows that “the sky was a woman’s arms”: at first we assume that this is a comfort to the dying man until, at the end of the song, we learn that it was a source of childhood fear. This giant comes from the tradition of macabre, violent folk tales rather than the friendly giants of contemporary children’s literature. At the same time, his childhood echoes ours: the giant is not a fairytale monster at all.

Another traditional story is gently subverted ‘Down In The Valley Of Hollow Logs”. Two young lovers commit suicide, the girl ‘pierc[ing] her lily-white breast’ with ‘a silver dag
ger’ which the boy then ‘stove … through his chest’. The song is played as a traditional country music ballad. However, the old story, although superficially intact, is subverted from the beginning: “Down in the valley of hollow logs two lovers lay in the weeds, wrapped in the net of their sweaty arms safe from the wind in the trees.” The romance of the silver dagger and double suicide is undercut by the reality of weeds and sweat, shown up for an adolescent retreat from reality yet rendered ambiguous by the hunting dogs and howling wind that perhaps truly threaten the couple.

Urban isolation, anorexia, poverty, death and superficial relationships are explored in four bittersweet minutes in ‘The Woman Downstairs’. Its tuba and accents of pretty piano sounds emphasise the ambiguity in the song: a mixture of painful emotion and black humour (“The cops wandered through her dusty rooms. One of them stole her TV.”).

The album ends with the powerful ‘My Ghost’. The lyrics recount singer Brett’s own experience of hospitalisation for manic depression, and are co-written by him and Rennie (lyricist and bassist). Its deceptive simplicity powerfully conveys both bipolarism and the indifference and infantilisation of the hospital: “Here in the bipolar ward if you shower you get a gold star… My ghost still bangs on the roof like John the Baptist in the rain while the nurses play Crazy Eights.” This very strong song is well placed at the end: you will want a moment to catch your breath after hearing it.

It is hard to do justice to this wonderful album in a review. Quotations can’t do more than give a slight flavour since the songs are compact stories. Its sound is somber and the lyrics often bleak, but the underlying humour in both words and music, the perfect manipulation of lyrical mood by the instrumentation and Brett’s voice, a
nd the complexity which rewards repeated listening mean that this is as inspiring, darkly amusing and sometimes even uplifting as it is depressing. Highly recommended!

Practical stuff:

For more information about The Handsome Family, visit http://handsomefamily.home.mindspring.com. It’s run by Rennie and Brett Sparks themselves, making it more fun and personal than many sites. You can order the album directly here. As you need to post a cheque it will take a little while (credit card ordering is apparently coming soon), but probably no longer than amazon.co.uk whose availability is four to six weeks.

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