Wilderness, the tenth long-player from the New Mexico-based husband-and-wife team of Brett and Rennie Sparks (the Handsome Family) lives up to its ecological moniker with a 12-track set that invokes both nature and nurture, with an emphasis on the shady bits in between.
Once again, Brett handles the melody side of things while Rennie conjures up the stories, and oh what diabolical tales they are.
Each song is named for a beast, bird, amphibian, reptile, or insect, and like a Kafka short story or a Michael Sowa painting, they occupy that strange, ill-defined moment between a particularly vivid dream and the cruel bleat of the alarm clock.
Standout cuts like the galloping, Beatlesque "Octopus," the funereal "Glow Worm," and the remarkably affecting "Wildebeest," the latter of which compares the death of Stephen Foster, the oft-cited father of American music, who bashed his head against a water basin in a fit of fever and later died from infection, to a crocodile-savaged "wildebeest gone crazy with thirst pulled down as he tried to drink," feel less like the warm, composed, bedroom country-folk hymns that they are and more like the vision quest-induced fever dreams of a modern day Carlos Castaneda chasing a particularly elusive spirit animal.
| Title/Composers | Performer | Listen | Time | Size | Size | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | FliesBrett Sparks, Rennie Sparks | The Handsome Family | Play | 03:41 | 8 MB | 23 MB |
| 2 | FrogsBrett Sparks, Rennie Sparks | The Handsome Family | Play | 04:41 | 10 MB | 27 MB |
| 3 | EelsBrett Sparks, Rennie Sparks | The Handsome Family | Play | 04:25 | 10 MB | 25 MB |
| 4 | OctopusBrett Sparks, Rennie Sparks | The Handsome Family | Play | 03:33 | 8 MB | 22 MB |
| 5 | OwlsBrett Sparks, Rennie Sparks | The Handsome Family | Play | 03:59 | 9 MB | 24 MB |
| 6 | CaterpillarsBrett Sparks, Rennie Sparks | The Handsome Family | Play | 04:42 | 10 MB | 28 MB |
| 7 | Glow WormBrett Sparks, Rennie Sparks | The Handsome Family | Play | 05:33 | 12 MB | 32 MB |
| 8 | LizardBrett Sparks, Rennie Sparks | The Handsome Family | Play | 05:12 | 11 MB | 33 MB |
| 9 | WoodpeckerBrett Sparks, Rennie Sparks | The Handsome Family | Play | 04:22 | 10 MB | 25 MB |
| 10 | GullsBrett Sparks, Rennie Sparks | The Handsome Family | Play | 04:20 | 9 MB | 27 MB |
| 11 | SpiderBrett Sparks, Rennie Sparks | The Handsome Family | Play | 03:54 | 8 MB | 26 MB |
| 12 | WildebeestBrett Sparks, Rennie Sparks | The Handsome Family | Play | 04:20 | 9 MB | 26 MB |
| 52 mins | 120 MB | |||||
| 52 mins | 324 MB | |||||
| Artist | Job | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jason Creps | Band Photo |
| 2 | Stephen Dorocke | Violin |
| 3 | Mark Greenberg | Percussion Engineer |
| 4 | Dave Gutierrez | Guitar, Mandolin, Pedal Steel |
| 5 | The Handsome Family | Primary Artist |
| 6 | Ted Jurney | Bass |
| 7 | Sheila Sachs | Design, Layout |
| 8 | Brett Sparks | Composer, Primary Artist, Vocals |
| 9 | Rennie Sparks | Artwork, Banjo, Composer, Vocals |
| 10 | Jason Toth | Percussion |
| 11 | Jason Ward | Mastering |
The Handsome Family
| Quality | Format | Encoding | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | MP3 | 320kps 44.1kHz | MP3 is an audio coding format which uses a form of lossy data compression. The highest bitrate of this format is 320kbps (kbit/s). MP3 Digital audio takes less amount of space (up to 90% reduction in size) and the quality is not as good as the original one. |
| CD Quality | FLAC | 16bit 44.1kHz | FLAC is an audio coding format which uses lossless compression. Digital audio in FLAC format has a smaller size and retains the same quality of the original Compact Disc (CD). |