Review: The Handsome Family, St George’s

It’s a fresh evening of spring, St George’s cellar is plunged into darkness because of a power cut and this atmosphere fits perfectly with what is about to come.

The first act of the evening, Morgan Geer from the band Drunken Prayer, gets the ball rolling in front of a surprisingly sparse crowd. The mood is rekindled with his strong soulful voice and his skilful sophisticated electric guitar accompaniment, which becomes a voice in itself. Geer uses this trick brilliantly to wriggle away from the absence of his band, and Love Looks Like a Master is a good example of this.

The Handsome Family are celebrating 20 years of their first release Odessa, twenty long years of touring blessings and twenty even longer years of being married to each other. After all this time, the stage is their comfort zone and their funny nonchalance quickly breaks the ice with the crowd. Brett tunes his guitars while Rennie relates some anecdotes that inspired her lyrics, such as the time when she wanted to go to this Wisconsin’s fudge shop so badly only to realise that it was closed. This catastrophic incident led her to write the beautiful Cathedrals.

All of their lyrics have strong storytelling and poetry attached to them. Listening to their music is taking a ride to their beautiful world tinted with sadness. Both Brett and Rennie suffer from mental illness and this is certainly reflected in their music. At times, it’s fragile, deep and melancholic, such as the opener Weightless Again, a number which could easily feature in a Tarantino movie (their song Far From Any Road was the theme of the series True Detective after all). But sometimes their music is bouncy, amusing and light such as Down in The Ground, a song that according to Rennie most people want to be played at their funeral whereas a minority let their children dance to it. The overall set is just like the ups and downs of a tormented mind.

The Handsome Family’s instrumentation is particularly interesting. The autoharp and the melodica are given a new lease of life and coexist with the lap steel guitar and the electric organ. Even the triangle, which Rennie calls ‘the most romantic instrument’, has a leading role on I Fell.

On most songs, Brett’s incredibly deep voice is complemented by Rennie’s high-pitched voice and it really works. The highlight of the evening is Brett’s rendition of Last Night I Went out Walking, on which he slightly strums his guitar and sings solo with a softly yet powerfully controlled voice. They invite Morgan Geer to join them for one last song and after an evening of opening their magic world to the audience, it isn’t a surprise that The Handsome Family deserts the stage on a round of applause.