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Word Magazine
Speck Mountain-Wherein alt.country square dances with psychedelic gospel
Musical collision could just be the last refuge of the indolent scoundrel, yet occasionally something genuinely thrilling can squeeze out between the cracks of genre paving stones so willfully tossed around. Speck Mountain’s Karl Briedrick and Marie-Claire Balabanian achieve an absorbing alchemy on their second album, compiling country, gospel, shoegazing, ambient and psychedelic sounds into what we could foolishly call a sonic Battenberg. In spirit and mood, these nine careful, sighing, unfolding tracks may on the surface call to mind Cat Power (Backsliding), Throwing Muses (the title track), Dusty In Memphis (I Feel Eternal) or mid-period Lambchop (Twinlines); but it’s the repetition of lethargic chords, beaten out over sleepy and minimal percussion, that delivers the music into a more spectral plane. Balabanian’s tired and pained voice is their trump card and sparse, whispered musical arrangement allows her the space to glide, a torch singer in an emotional power cut. —Eamonn Forde

Labels: Speck Mountain, Word Magazine

There's a good lesson to be learned about romance from the Handsome Family's husband-and-wife team of Brett and Rennie Sparks. Take My Friend, a brilliantly low-key lament that swings slowly across the front third of the reord. If you tilt your head back and close your eyes you'll believe you've sat on a bench outside a white wooden church somewhere in Macon County. Inside, just through that crack in the door, Brett's stood in the pulpit dressed in robes that have seen many, many better days, he's got three days' growth and the smell of raw gin on his breath. Rennie's sat at the organ, looking at her husband, wondering why no one else can see the good in him.

I know, it's ludicrous. For a start, Rennie writes the words and plays no instruments, but that's the sort of dramatic power that they bring to their songs. Lots of people swear that they live inside their material, but The Handsome Family can feel like they've actually been cast in the movie of their songs and have been method acting like their lives depended on it ever since...

Labels: The Handsome Family, Word Magazine