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Honey Moon

by

The Handsome Family

 
Honey Moon
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Avg: 4.0 (16 ratings)

The Handsome Family celebrate the romance of romance, not of death, this time round

  • We Say...

    Review by Michaelangelo Matos

    If "no one dies on a Handsome Family album" isn't quite as newsworthy as "man walks on the moon," it still comes as a surprise. The body count — owing to murder, suicide or simply vengeful Mother Nature — on the Albuquerque duo's previous studio albums was pretty perilous, but on Honey Moon, Brett and Rennie Sparks, the married couple who write music and lyrics, respectively, celebrate the romance of romance, not of death.

    Not that the Handsome Family has switched all that much otherwise. Brett's still singing in a bendy, dolorous baritone, though he's swooping around a lot more than usual, particularly on "The Loneliness of Magnets," which has a vocal melody that winds so preposterously that the song's chorus ("I feel the loneliness of magnets /And the tides across the sea") sounds like an audition to voice a villain in a Popeye cartoon. The spooky country arrangements are as ingratiating as ever, particularly the dry pedal steel that twists around "Little Sparrows" and the soft doo-wop piano triplets and guitar that sounds like Marc Ribot covering Angelo Badalamenti on "Linger, Let Me Linger."

    And then there are the words. You can spot a Rennie Sparks lyric across the room: "You leaned in closer/As the sun fell away/The plastic bag tripled/Caught in the wings/When you whispered what you whispered in my ear" ("When You Whispered"). As for nature, she's just getting started: it can't be a coincidence that "The Petrified Forest" is followed by "Wild Wood" on the album sequence, and "Linger" features a disarming heart-to-heart with a tree: "Twine your vines around me/Drop your branches in my path," Rennie wrote for Brett to plead. You know, it's a love song. By the Handsome Family. Of course.

  • They Say...

    Review by Mark Deming, All Music Guide

    Since releasing their first album in 1995, Brett and Rennie Sparks of the Handsome Family have built a cottage industry out of creating some of the most charmingly morbid songs in contemporary music; death, despair, alcohol, broken dreams, and dashed hopes are common ingredients in their songs, leavened with dark wit and dressed up in lovely, austere melodies and close Appalachian-flavored harmonies. But with Brett and Rennie celebrating 20 years as husband and wife, they decided to try something a bit different for their eighth studio album, and 2009's Honey Moon is a collection of 12 non-ironic songs about love. If you're expecting that this is going to be a bit sunnier than the usual offering from the Handsome Family, you're right, but that's not to say that odd little clouds don't appear on the horizon. In "Little Sparrows," the literal lovebirds of the title are watching cars from a highway overpass, "A Thousand Diamond Rings" opens with a litany of urban detritus such as broken-down trucks and smashed windows, "Darling My Darling" is sung in the voice of an insect attempting to seduce a female of the species, and "The Loneliness of Magnets" uses elementary physics as a metaphor for romance. The Handsome Family aren't exactly rewriting "You Light Up My Life" here, but they're not rewriting their previous albums, either; Honey Moon is the duo's most eclectic album to date, with Brett and Rennie cautiously embracing the sound of classic pop ballads ("Linger, Let Me Linger"), vintage R&B ("My Friend"), Tin Pan Alley crooning ("The Loneliness of Magnets"), and electronic pop ("Love Is Like") along with the traditional country and folk influences. Despite the new textures, Honey Moon still sounds like the Handsome Family, but a version of the Handsome Family that hasn't abandoned the notion of hope, and by the time "The Winding Corn Maze" closes out the album, you're not entirely shocked that the protagonist actually finds who he's been looking for amidst the stalks. On first listen, anyone familiar with the Handsome Family will keep waiting for someone to die or go insane as if wondering when the shoe will drop, but ultimately Honey Moon proves they can ease into more optimistic surroundings and not lose touch with the strange and ethereal qualities that have made them worthwhile.

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