For the Handsome Family, upcoming album Honey Moon—a collection of love songs due April 14—is a startling left turn. The husband/wife duo of Brett and Rennie Sparks still deals in spectral bluegrass and noirish folk forms on its ninth album, but gone are the ghosts and murder ballads that had painted them into a gothic-Americana corner. (Trust us, the album is still plenty weird. Love is weird.) The Handsome Family is guest editing magnetmagazine.com this week. Read our Q&A with Brett and Rennie about Honey Moon and a host of other topics.
Rennie Sparks: There’s an old box elder tree in our backyard. It’s full of dead limbs and crawling with bugs, but somehow it manages to produce an explosion of broad green leaves every spring. The foliage is so dense mid-summer that when my cat leaps up into the branches, he completely disappears. The woodpeckers are not fooled. Every autumn, they return. A woodpecker’s hearing is so acute it can actually hear bugs burrowing through a tree trunk as it flies past overhead. The tongue of the woodpecker is extremely long and ends in a razor-sharp barb. The woodpecker hammers at the holes made by insects, then snakes its tongue into the wood to skewer its prey. In early September, I hear them out there tap-tap tapping as the sun rises. It’s a deep and hollow sound like a gloved hand patting down wet soil: the perfect sound to wake up to.
