Jools Holland has won. The spirit of the music in his Later show is now everywhere except the top ten or Smash Hits. What links new country or new prog rock, Gomez to Arab Strap, Massive Attack to Beck, Mogwai to Hazeldine isn't the sound. It's the fact none of them are playing the game, writes Graham Chalmers. No image, no sound-bites, no sell-out, just music. Pleasing themselves. Mixing and matching. Looking back to go forward. In the excellent article you're about to read, Tom Syson of Harrogate band The Purple Mushrooms meets up with The Handsome Family to scrape below the skin of two of America's leading 'new country' bands.

The Handsome Family - by Tom Syson

Weightless Again by Chicago's The Handsome Family, a song about the plight of American Indians ("most died of T.B, the rest went insane") is one of the strangest and most intriguing tracks I've ever heard. Determined to find out more about this bizarre outfit, hopefully for an interview, we set off for Fibbers in York early. The Handsome Family are bickering husband-and-wife team Brett and Rennie Sparks. Their most recent work, Through The Trees, won Uncut magazine's Country Album of the Year.

Tom: Talk to me about the lyrics, Brett.

Brett Sparks: They're about the elemental forces of nature. Just nature as creator and destroyer. But, then again, I don't write the lyrics, Rennie does. I can say whatever the fuck I want, like, say..." it's about Hindu cosmology" cos she's not here to defend herself.

Tom: How have you progressed over the years?

Brett: When we started playing in Chicago, we didn't know what the fuck we were doing cos I was into old country and into punk and noisy stuff like Sonic Youth and post-Nirvana grunge. We'd play all this country stuff and then step on our pedals and make a load of noise. We were terrible. We could hardly play our instruments. I taught Rennie to play bass and my best drinking buddy to play drums but he could only play two different beats. So the first record is half country, half punk. Then we got more and more into hardcore country stuff but the lyrics got more and more twisted and now we're doing this fucked-up country-onica thing.

Tom: (Brett and Rennie aren't touring with a backing group, they're touring with a DAT. tape. : I ask Brett if he prefers it that way)

Brett: It's easier playing with a backing tape than a drummer who has no rhythm or plays like Keith Moon. Like our drummer was really bad at first but then he got really good and I'm glad he quit because he was getting too good.
Several well-known drummer jokes are passed around.

The Handsome Family are on stage now. After they open with Weightless Again, Rennie tells the crowd one of her sick stories: "When I was small, I had a hamster but he escaped and I never saw him again until I was 16 smoking pot in the basement behind the boiler where my mum couldn't find me and I looked down and there were the little bones of my hamster."

Brett takes the mic. "Anyway. This one's about the world's tallest man.

Rennie: "No, it's not. It's about dead swans. Dead swans are the quietest swans."

Brett (sings): "The giant of Illinois died of a blister on his toe/after walking all day through the first winter snow/throwing bits of stale bread to the last speckled doves/he never felt his shoe full of blood."

Despite its sick lyrics about two kids (one with a club foot) throwing stones and killing a sleeping swan, Giant is a beautifully sung ballad. Brett is having problems with his equipment.

Brett: Why can't we all get along and have the same voltage. I've got a bag here full of different batteries"

Rennie: "Your life is so painful"

Brett: "It's not your fault, it's just the world. Anyway. This is a new song"

Rennie: "You told me you were doing this, you fucker (shrieks). You see what you're putting me through"

Brett: "Fucking melodramatics"

Later, Brett gets his manjo working while his wife tells another sick story.

Brett: "You're warming to these stories, right? (breaks into another song) "Chicago is where the woman downstairs starved herself to death last summer/her boyfriend Ted ate hot dogs and wept with the gray rats out on the fire escape... and as the wind screamed up Ashland Avenue/the corner bars were full by noon and the old stew-bums sliding down their stools ate boiled eggs and fed beer to their dogs"

After their set is finished, Rennie sits and talks with us for a while. Do you like Hush Puppies, my friend asks her.

"I prefer corn dogs", she replies.

© Modern Music Review (2008)