The wonderful Handsome Family will be touring the UK in May, visiting us in Oxford and also playing London’s legendary 100 Club.

Our friend Ronan of Nightshift magazine describes them far better than we ever could in his listing for the Oxford gig:

The husband and wife duo of Brett and Rennie Sparks have been creating beautiful, grotesque music together for close to 20 years and nine albums now. The couple’s mix of darkly minimalist music with lyrics that blur the lines between the mundane and the fantastical is as potent as it is unassuming. These are songs of weirdness and wonder set in mysterious places, whether deep in the forests or in dusty back roads motels and deal with anything from the discovery of electricity or meditations on death and the desire to properly live, to a story of a man who discovers a hole in his backyard which never fills up however much rubbish he tips into it, until he uses it to journey to the darkest places on earth.

The lyrical pictures Rennie paints are often magical and bizarre – not surprising coming from someone who claims she sees ghosts – while Brett’s time spent in a mental hospital finds its way into some of the duo’s stories. Musically they drift through old-time bluegrass and classic country to honky tonk and rustic rock but always with a feeling of something unearthly about them.

It’s been well over a decade since The Handsome Family last graced an Oxfordshire stage, but we’ve never forgotten just how great they were then and we expect nothing less than greatness again this time.

Hear hear!

Tour Dates:

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Download The Handsome Family – The Bottomless Hole mp3 (from Singing Bones)

Download The Handsome Family – So Much Wine mp3 (from In The Air)

Download The Handsome Family – Just Like Tom Thumb Blues mp3 (from Scattered)

Download The Handsome Family – Drinking Beer On The Roof mp3 (from Scattered, Bonus Track)

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