The Handsome Family at the
Jericho Tavern, Oxford.Tue. Nov 30th, 1999
Reviewed by Colonel Antony
Green
There can be scarce
few more rewarding moments than to arrive at a
gig just as the
Handsome Family launch into their masterpiece,
Weightless Again, from
their 1998 Through the Trees album: one of
the recent years’
great haunting melodies, the song really gets to that
place inside where it
can move you, especially with such sadness in
its lyrics –
‘Those poor, lost Indians/ When the white men
found
them/ Most died of TB/
The rest went insane’.
And so I find myself
in a not-too-full Jericho on a cold Tuesday
night confronted with
this unlikely looking, matrimonially bound duo
from Chicago. Three
albums in, the couple have earned widespread
praise and respect
stateside as well as mounting exposure, especially
providing support for
a recent Wilco tour. Tonight is a far cry from
such grandeur, it has
to be said, but the modest crowd are more than
grateful for such an
occasion and obviously know their back
catalogues as they get
cosy in chairs pulled up close to the stage,
and sit rapt for the
entire hour that the performance lasts, almost
too scared to go to
the bar in case they miss anything.
With songs such as
Weightless Again in store, this is a fair
reaction. Brett and
Rennie have the stage to themselves, save a drum
machine, and the
intimacy is such that mics are virtually redundant.
Brett is guitarist and
singer of Rennie’s songs, while she switches
frequently between
autoharp, mellodion and one of those La Crosse
stick bass guitars
favoured by reggae artists. Each half of the
Family has great
presence and the stage seems deceptively full.
From the sad songs on
offer, the treats tend to be the
really sad
ones that get you in
ways similar to those I mentioned before. My
Sister’s Tiny
Hands is the show’s crowning moment, Brett
playing a
mean washboard and
Rennie almost crying into her autoharp, and you
feel that this is a
deeply personal moment for her. Elsewhere, some
songs seem not
to be deeply personal moments for Brett (notably the
more humorous stuff
like The Dutchboy or Cathedrals) and he gets a
bit bumptious and
Bare-Naked-Lady-like for my liking, slightly
undermining the
delicacy of the songs, which is a shame. Mind you,
the rest of the crowd
doesn’t seem too bothered, especially when the
Handsomes oblige them
with three or four encores. Even my car is
touched by this
evening’s performance and, like a character in a
Rennie Sparks lyric,
breaks down on the way home.
'Colonel' Antony
Green.
sHots