In the Air
Chicago's Handsome Family draws its inspiration from traditional murder ballads, but unlike theCarter Family, whose name they pun, Brett and Rennie Sparks do it out of a fascination with the macabre rather than a familiarity with it.In the Air, the couple's fourth album, chronicles a world full of death, snakes, dark highways, and sad milkmen. To the Sparkses (Rennie writes the lyrics; Brett sings them), this world isn't bleak or bizarre, it's beautiful--and vivid. Here a man isn't simply skinny, he's "thin as the bow of his black violin." And here, when William got killed, the murderer lingered and "watched as his blood ran through dead grass / Watched as the black ants crawled through his hands." And somehow, through Brett's sonorous baritone, Rennie's breathy melodica, and guestAndrew Bird's violin, even such violence seems ultimately peaceful.--Anders Smith-Lindall