* Add GIG * Magazine * Artists * Venues * Promoters and Events * Listing & PR Services * Contact

London Folk Magazine and News

Single Review: The Handsome Family - ´Gold´

Single Review: The Handsome Family - ´Gold´

 

Husband and wife duo Rennie and Brett Sparks – the Handsome Family – return with a new album, ‘Unseen’ on September 16th via Loose. The album’s first single ‘Gold’ was released on Friday 15th July.

 

‘Unseen’ was recorded at the couple’s home studio at night, when, as Brett mentions, “only hawk moths [are] listening”. Under cover of darkness, stories about ‘what we cannot see’ are told – stories of murders and isolation.

 

‘Gold’ is a gothic and inspirational ballad, in which the melodic voice of Brett leads us, “past the lights of town”, alongside a mysterious tattooed ski masked walker. Livid, surreal.

 

This song evokes cinematic images – a journey at sunset towards the unknown. As often with the Handsome Family, lyrics are directly inspired by real life events. As for ‘Gold’, the initial point was a windy day in a parking lot where a twenty-dollar bill suddenly blew in Brett’s face – the incident became a contemplative image for our threatening wanderer, “watching dollar bills fly away in the dust”, as “the sun is sinking down”. Shiny paper bathed in the shading light of a flamboyant periphery.

 

We know nothing about this man and in a mixture of apprehension and enchantment, I wonder– did he implement his hunger for ‘something mean’?

 

We don’t want to see yet can’t look away. ‘Unseen’ presages ambivalent states and fantasist storytelling.

 

Listen to ´Gold´ below!

 

 

* Add GIG * Magazine * Artists * Venues * Promoters and Events * Listing & PR Services * Contact
© 2014 - 2024 FOLK AND HONEY. ALL RIGHT RESERVED. (v1.0)