Handsome Family
+ Daniel Knox
Friday 13 May : 8pm
£12.00 adv : £14.00 door
Over the last two decades New Mexico based husband and wife duo Brett and Rennie Sparks (aka The Handsome Family) have recorded a series of albums that has established them as one of America’s finest songwriting partnerships and has seen them hailed as “country music’s answer to the White Stripes” and by Greil Marcus as “the Beatles of the folk world”.
Until relatively recently this married couple of twenty years were a well kept secret but a punishing tour schedule and word of mouth has meant sell-out concerts across the UK and Europe, extensive coverage in the national press, the patronage of Ringo Starr on USA chat shows, and high profile appearances on top rated BBC TV and radio that include The Culture Show on BBC 2, The Jonathan Ross Show, Andy Kershaw’s award winning world music program for Radio 3 and Later With Jools Holland.
More recently they appeared in Jim White’s Searching For The Wrong Eyed Jesus – an award winning Deep South travelogue for Arena that found them discussing in the back of a car (as only Brett and Rennie could) the meaning of faith and spirituality, and performing When That Helicopter Comes in the middle of a swamp.
In addition the band have had songs covered by artists such as Andrew Bird (The Giant Of Illinois) Cerys Matthews (Weightless Again) and Christy Moore (So Much Wine/Peace In The Valley) and joined the likes of Nick Cave, Rufus Wainwright and Linda Thompson for Hal Willner’s Came So Far For Beauty – a musical celebration of the songs of Leonard Cohen that has so far been performed in Brighton, to over ten thousand people in Dublin, NYC, and for three sell-out nights at the Sydney Opera House. They have also appeared in I’m Your Man – a feature documentary examining the work of Cohen and cropped up in several works of fiction and appeared on The Oyster Band’s The Big Session live project – winner of ‘best group’ in Radio 2′s 2005 Folk Awards.
New album Honey Moon (their eighth) is a collection of love songs written in celebration of their twentieth wedding anniversary but as this is the Handsome Family it’ll be a collection of love songs like no other before. It’s out now on Loose Music.
What The Papers Say
“they imply the wild things at civilization’s edge – brilliant!” – Mojo
“songs of weirdness and wonder, set in a half wild, half urban, entirely mysterious place” – The Guardian
“beautifully eerie – a wonderful album” – Daily Telegraph
“words that in their everyday surrealism have no parallel in contemporary writing…it’s music that mines the deep veins of fatalism in the Appalachian voice” – Greil Marcus – Granta
“music that moves forward by turning the clock back – haunting, primal and strangely heroic” – The Times
This is the UK debut for David Lynch and Jarvis Cocker collaborator, Daniel Knox.
With comparisons being made to songwriters such as Randy Newman, Richard Swift and Antony Hegarty, Chicago-based Knox – who has already shared a stage with the likes of Damon Albarn and Rufus Wainwright at the Barbican’s Plague Songs event - is fast living up to the Evening Standard’s proclamation that he’s “a name to watch”.
Daniel Knox
On Evryman for Himself, Knox’s latest album and first on La Société Expéditionnaire, the songwriter reveals a melancholic, often haunting collection of songs that are as elaborate and unusual as the settings where the songwriter first honed his craft. The album is more reminiscent of stalwarts like Cole Porter and Maurice Chevalier than most modern artists, but retains a rebellious spirit akin to artists like Randy Newman, Antony, and songwriters such as Nick Cave. It’s big music with a minimalist flourish, words that seem unrelated until you give it a listen. Some of the songs lure, some lilt and jeer, but all are stamped with his contagious melodies and preoccupation with styles of the 1920’s – a peculiar package for his lyrical jabs and barbs. A Harold Arlen for the darker set, he bellows tales of disillusionment, obsession, and criminal intent. Knox is a rogue at the piano, crooning, sneering and shouting so that his cast of characters may speak.
