About

A TAV Curator’s Pick.

Singing Bones is the sixth studio album released by alternative country band The Handsome Family, originally released in 2003 by Carrot Top Records.

“In a way, then, this is the band's most beautiful record, an expertly arranged blend of their acoustic old school country augmented by pedal steel guitar and bowed saws and sometimes colored by elements of mariachi, gospel, and rural folk. Rather than the airy, light sounds of their recent In the Air and Twilight, the new record has a spacious, almost minimalist sound that seems to echo with the sound of the nominal ghosts. Departed friends and lovers, the weight of history, and personal demons all seem channeled by the Sparks. From the apparitions that haunt the aisles of the "24-Hour Store" to the stench of death in "Far From the Road" to the sense of resignation that accompanies loss in both "The Bottomless Hole" and "Gail with the Golden Hair", ruin and decay-- spiritual, mental, and physical-- are central themes of the record.” – Pitchfork

About The Handsome Family:

The Handsome Family is an alternative country and Americana duo consisting of husband and wife Brett and Rennie Sparks formed in Chicago, Illinois, and currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They are perhaps best known for their song "Far from Any Road" from the album Singing Bones, which was used as the main title theme for the first season of HBO's 2014 crime drama True Detective.

The Handsome Family's style is a blend of traditional country, bluegrass, and murder ballads.Early recordings have rock elements, but these were less evident from 1996's Milk and Scissors onwards.

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. Some songs are also based on actual historical figures or events, including the lives and deaths of Amelia Earhart ("Amelia Earhart vs. the Dancing Bear", on Milk and Scissors), Emily Shore ("Emily Shore 1819–1839", on Milk and Scissors), Robert Wadlow ("The Giant of Illinois", on Through the Trees), Natalie Wood ("Natalie Wood", an outtake from Twilight, which appears on Smothered and Covered), and Nikola Tesla ("Tesla's Hotel Room", on Last Days of Wonder). The title of Last Days of Wonder is a reference to Puritan scientist and witch-hunter Cotton Mather's 1693 book Wonders of the Invisible World, which Rennie found intriguing because of what she called its "madness brimming under the surface of things."

Source: Wiki

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