Through the Trees

1998 release, the third full-length from the Alt-Country/Americana outfit. The Handsome Family were formed in 1993 by husband and wife duo Brett Sparks and Rennie Sparks along with drummer Mike Werner. The band, born and bred in Chicago before migrating to Albuquerque, play a unique blend of traditional Country, Bluegrass, and murder ballads. Rennie's lyrics have a strong storytelling component, drawing on themes from Gothic fiction, as well as American folk music, and often involving macabre subjects as murders, suicides and ghosts. Through the Trees was nominated by Mojo readers as one of the most important Americana CDs of the 1990s.

For their second album, Brett and Rennie Sparks take a more serious approach, eschewing the jokier elements of their debut and concentrating on writing country music with an urban sensibility and a post-graduate degree. It's doubtful that any previous country album included songs in praise of Cologne Cathedral or Lake Michigan, but backed by the Sparks' austere songs--often just guitar, autoharp, and drum machine--with occasional help by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, the music has an almost Appalachian simplicity and newfound depth of feeling. Like coming across a brownstone in the mountains, the Handsome Family's music is simultaneously disconcerting and strangely beautiful. --Steven Mirkin