Duo happy to explore gloom

DARK JOURNEY: Husband-and-wife team Rennie (left) and Brett Sparks are The Handsome Family.

Glass-smashing woodpeckers, supernatural octopods, stalking spiders, sorrowful celebrity deaths and plenty of ghosts ... a mere handful of what Brett and Rennie Sparks plan to bring to Masterton next month.

The couple, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, make up alt-country duo The Handsome Family, who will be performing at King St Live as part of the Kokomai Creative Festival.

With a career spanning two decades and 14 albums, the Handsome Family are often called "the Gomez and Morticia [Addams] of country music" for their gallows humour and eccentric, sometimes macabre, subject matter.

Guitarist Brett Sparks said he and wife Rennie look forward to taking their Wairarapa audience on a journey - but warns that this will be a darker, grittier holiday, full of carnivorous critters, insane asylums and a few murders.

"We're not all daffodils and lollipops," said Sparks, who composes all the band's tunes, while Rennie writes the lyrics.

"Music can be an escape. Like taking a drug, or drinking a six pack. But, to me, that's a waste.

"We write about reality. I like to hear the reality in music."

US critics have highlighted The Handsome Family's morbid lyrics, claiming they "make Leonard Cohen look cheery" - but Sparks insists their songs are just slices of life, sometimes with a surrealist twist.

"We write about everything - little disappointments, the strange ambiguities that follow you around," he said.

"Things like 'is there a God?', 'what makes someone kill another person?', and 'what makes a flower grow?'

"But, there's humour, too. Rennie and I banter away on stage. We bicker with each other. Our gigs are like hanging out in our living room, having a few beers."

The Sparks have been playing together as The Handsome Family since 1993, and released their first album, Odessa, with the independent label Carrot Top Records in 1994.

Brett Sparks has been playing the piano from a young age, and says his formative years were dominated by classical music.

He didn't discover country music until the early 1990s - and found it far more pleasing than most of the popular music on the airwaves.

"A lot of the late 80s/early 90s stuff kind of sucked," he said. "So, I started listening to people like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Steve Earle, Randy Travis.

"Beforehand, I'd dismissed country as my dad's music. But country music has that raw power. It's like punk rock."

"I like songs that tell stories, instead of describing how the singer's feeling. I don't give a s*** about that. I like songs that feel like a pantomime, or a Shakespeare play."

The Handsome Family play at King St Live on Saturday October 19. Tickets available from www.dashtickets.co.nz.