The Handsome Family, Honey Moon

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.