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. [...]
They’re nobody’s buzz bands anymore. But since 1993, MAGNET has discovered and documented more great music than memory will allow. The groups may have broken up or the albums may be out of print, but this time, history is written by the losers. Here are some of the finest albums that time forgot but we [...]
Armed with appropriately melancholy folk tunes, Port O’Brien makes for the perfect soundtrack to your post-Valentine’s Day blues. The California quintet led by former fisherman Van Pierszalowski follows last year’s acclaimed All We Could Do Was Sing with the Winter single this week online. (It’s also available as a limited-edition seven-inch.) The first in a series [...]
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 [...]
Corey duBrowa once wrote a 1,700-word review of Hail To The Thief for the Seattle Weekly, ushering in a wave of fan mail that read like sour times at the Target returns counter. Which evidently hasn’t disqualified him from issuing the following list of the five most overrated and underrated songs in Radiohead’s lengthy, critically [...]
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. [...]
They’re nobody’s buzz bands anymore. But since 1993, MAGNET has discovered and documented more great music than memory will allow. The groups may have broken up or the albums may be out of print, but this time, history is written by the losers. Here are some of the finest albums that time forgot but we [...]
Back in 2007, Australia’s Youth Group retreated to a ratty, 1920s-era mess hall on Sydney’s Harbor to record fourth album The Night Is Ours. The newly renovated recording studio provided a creepy, secluded atmosphere that oddly enough created a comfy writing environment for the quartet to assemble its most ambitious work to date. The initial [...]
We’re not here to bemoan the dismal state of the music industry or music retail—though there is plenty to bemoan about. We thought it worth mentioning that Milwaukee’s Atomic Records is closing its doors next month. MAGNET never had much business in Milwaukee, so we never had occasion to visit the independently owned store; we [...]
Over the course of 16 years and nine albums, the weird, wonderful world of the Handsome Family has been populated by tales of ghosts, murders, bottomless holes and the mysterious deaths of Nikola Tesla and Amelia Earhart. For the Albuquerque, N.M., husband/wife duo of Brett and Rennie Sparks, an album of love songs is a [...]
