Milk & Scissors
1996 release, the sophomore album from the Alt-Country/Americana outfit. The Handsome Family were formed in 1993 by husband and wife duo Brett Sparks and Rennie Sparks along with drummer Mike Werner.  The band, born and bred in Chicago before migrating to Albuquerque, play a unique blend of traditional Country, Bluegrass, and murder ballads. 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. On Milk & Scissors, the Handsome Family began their retreat away from the electric guitar-based sound of their debut, Odessa, and started to ease into their unique mix of Appalachian textures and 20th century despair that would become their calling card.