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  • The Handsome Family

  • Tue Jun 17
    • Recommended
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  • 100 Club, 100 Oxford Street, W1D 1LL
  • 100 Club

    The Handsome Family

  • By Bella Todd

    Posted: Tue Jun 10

  • It’s confirmation of the unshifting cultishness of Albuquerque’s The Handsome Family that no one has yet nabbed them for a TV show. The far-fetched plots of their songs, which include such macabre adventures as finding a bottomless hole in your backyard and escaping from a plane crash on a raft of skin and bones, would make for gripping teatime viewing. Meanwhile, you could build an ‘At Home with the Sparks’ documentary around the dynamic of their real-life relationship, which began 20 years ago when raven-haired Rennie met country singer Brett and told him his lyrics needed an injection of excitement.

    It’s an uncomplicated partnership: he writes the music, a marriage of dusty hillbilly and limping Tin Pan Alley crooners, and she writes the lyrics, vivid tales of animals and outlaws, life’s small miracles and epic mess-ups. These Brett renders with a disinterested baritone, slackening into a heartbreaking howl when he comes to a lyric about love. Rennie plays banjo and chips in with a voice that could curdle a cow.

    This has gone on for eight albums, producing some of the saddest, funniest and most criminally underappreciated songs of the past decade. This show should include new material from an LP of love songs, due later in the year. On-stage banter is always guaranteed, and with any luck Rennie will reveal what happened earlier this year when, in one of the most unlikely musical events of all time, the duo joined The Barenaked Ladies on a Caribbean concert cruise. ‘If The Handsome Family ever organised a gathering like this,’ she pointed out, ‘it would probably be held in a flaming dirigible or 10,000 leagues under the sea.’

    Further listening: tinyurl.com/4davzo
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  • Details

  • 100 Club,100 Oxford Street, W1D 1LL
    , UK
    Geo: 51.516217, -0.135308
  • 020 7636 0933
  • Category: Rock, pop & dance
  • Times: 7.30pm
  • Price: £15, adv £12.50
  • Tube: Tottenham Court Road

  • Map

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ohmygosh32

I am a really nice girl who just isnt great at picking nice men, plus have just moved to this area. Would be great to just meet some people around...

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