Sparks fly
Rennie Sparks and Brett Sparks of the Handsome Family are more at home dancing in the moonlight than walking on sunshine.

By Jimmy Draper

'SUPER-UPBEAT songs make me really, really depressed," Rennie Sparks admits. Speaking over the phone from Albuquerque, N.M., where she shares a home with her husband and bandmate, Brett Sparks, the Handsome Family's female half is explaining the country music duo's penchant for penning songs about life's more morbid moments.

"It's like when I was watching The Oprah Winfrey Show and they were talking about depression," she continues. "This woman in the audience stood up and said, 'When I feel down, I sing "Walking on Sunshine" to myself, and it gets me in a great mood.' All these women in the audience were nodding their heads like, 'That's a really good idea. We should all do that.' But I just felt like jumping out a window when she said that because I'll never experience the kind of happiness in that song. I mean, god bless 'em – I'm glad there are people [who like that music] – but we're not writing songs for them."

Indeed, one thing is certain after listening to the Handsome Family: Katrina and the Waves they're not. Since the mid '90s the Sparks spouses – she writes the lyrics, he writes the music and sings – have filled a half dozen dark, deeply poignant albums with murder ballads, folk hymns, and death waltzes indebted as much to the work of Edgar Allan Poe as to Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. In their songs Rennie describes lost, lonely souls who are cursed with bipolar disorders, prone to suicide, and bogged down by life's infinite misfortunes. "This is why people O.D. on pills and jump from the Golden Gate Bridge / Anything to feel weightless again," Brett sings on their 1998 breakthrough album, Through the Trees.

In the years since, the duo have amassed a die-hard following – endearingly described by Rennie as "a strange, maudlin, alienated, shut-in cross section of the population" – who enthusiastically embrace their appreciation for all things macabre. "They send us a lot of interesting things in the mail," Brett says in his booming Texan baritone. "If by interesting you mean terrifying."

"Like that bird skull I got," Rennie adds. "It looked like a hummingbird skull that they'd pasted onto a board, and they put, like, a little pink doll's dress on it. It was kind of girlie and kind of scary, so I can understand why they were thinking of me."

Family joke

Despite all the death and suffering depicted in their songs, the Handsome Family are strong contenders for country's funniest couple. Throughout our interview, they bicker good-naturedly, talk over each other, and trade hilariously self-deprecating one-liners as if starring in a kooky C&W remake of The Addams Family. An earthier Morticia and Gomez, Rennie and Brett play off each other like seasoned comics, cracking jokes and sharing anecdotes about everything from New Mexico's military presence ("weapons of mass destruction – Iraq: 0, Albuquerque: 3,000") to their early, alcohol-addled performances.

"Back then I'd just learned to play guitar – I did it out of necessity – and I probably had taught Rennie how to play bass a few months before," Brett explains. "We were such bad musicians that I think we were self-medicating [with booze]."

"Well, I know we were self-medicating, but it wasn't because we were bad!" Rennie cackles, her deadpan voice making everything sound like a punch line. "Anyway, it didn't matter if we were drunk 'cause we'd have sucked whether we were sober or not – at least we had the drunkenness to blame it on. But you can't keep that up for long because [playing shows] is actually a lot of work, and you can stay at home and drink a six-pack for a lot less effort."

Nearly a decade later the Handsome Family's shows are far less sloppy, if still not entirely straightforward, affairs. As in our conversation, the Sparkses incorporate charmingly quirky storytelling and banter into their performances, their wicked sense of humor offering a stark contrast – and relief – to their repertoire's seriousness. And while they never treat death like a joke, it's a welcome approach: by tempering their funereal procession of songs with an almost vaudevillian levity, they give their Gothic tales – and their fans – room to breathe.

"We don't really believe in – this sounds kind of polemic but – [adopting mock intellectual tone] maintaining the traditional boundaries between audiences and performers," Brett says. "We're not the symphony or the opera. It's a rock 'n' roll show that contains humorous elements."

"But sometimes we're not funny and goofy," Rennie adds. "Sometimes we're horrifying."

Together alone

As the title Singing Bones might imply, the Handsome Family's latest album is one such time. Released last fall on Chicago's Carrot Top Records, the gorgeous, 13-song collection is permeated by a brand of horrific despair that would've made Emily Dickinson feel less alone in the world. Throughout, lovers disappear into valleys, men plummet into bottomless pits, and soldiers die beneath blooming peach trees. Those who aren't sent to early graves fare little better: as Brett sings on "24-Hour Store," "Everyone thinks, 'I'm alone, all alone.' " True to the duo's previous, relentlessly depressing recordings, there's little indication here that the Sparkses have ever attempted to write a song that's even remotely happy.

"I think they're all happy," Brett insists, earnestly if not convincingly. "[Singing Bones's] 'Far from Any Road' and 'The Song of a Hundred Toads' – those are upbeat songs." It should be noted, however, that most folks probably wouldn't choose happy to describe "The Song of a Hundred Toads," the story of a man who, when his horse and wagon tumble off a cliff, dies alone in the mountains after days of "crawling on [his] knees, eating handfuls of dust."

"Well, our songs all start out happy," Rennie qualifies, laughing. "But I just feel like inherently there's a certain lie to super-upbeat songs that I find distasteful. In real life and even in moments of joy, there's always a tinge of sadness because you know time is moving on and nothing lasts forever, and super-upbeat songs leave that out of the picture. And I like things to feel like real life."

It could be argued, of course, that the Handsome Family dwell disproportionately on life's hardships and miseries, in effect leaving out the joy just as, say, Katrina and the Waves leave out the joylessness. Listen closely enough to the Sparkses' songs, however, and a sense of peace emerges. Though they're more at home dancing in the moonlight than walking on sunshine, Brett and Rennie ultimately offer listeners comfort in the fact that there are people in the world who don't find relief in the usual peppy, happy-go-lucky songs. It's a comfort that even the most intentionally happy music often fails to achieve.

"It's like that movie Pretty Woman," Rennie continues. "It's billed as this 'stand-up-and-cheer movie.' But nobody ever does that. Those movies are a nice escape from reality, but when they're over, I find it's almost a painful process coming back into my own life because the rules are different. They make me feel really isolated because that's not my experience of life. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we don't have to stand up and cheer to find life meaningful."

Handsome Family perform Sat/24, 9:30 p.m., and Sun/25, 9 p.m., Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., S.F. $15. (415) 626-4455.