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Track of the Day - 1/25/2007
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The Handsome Family - My Sister's Tiny Hands Listen to My Sister's Tiny Hands on Rhapsody I just can't stay away from The Handsome Family for too long.  I have all of their CD's playing in my car CD player, so I can visit their dark worlds every time I drive around town.  Naturally then, they are the first artist that I am going to revisit here, despite the fact that there are still countless bands that we haven't even looked at yet.  I can't help it.  They have some sort of weird spell over me. If you recall from the first time we visited them with their song Arlene, The Handsome Family is labeled as a country artist, which is fair.  Well, actually they are labeled and alt-country band, but I have always struggled with the “alternative” label.  Isn't rock n' roll and alternative to country?  Or blues?  Or pop?  So when it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, you call it a duck.  The Handsome Family is more in line with traditional country than modern day pop-country, with a little bluegrass thrown in.  When you listen to their stuff, it is not hard to see that a lot of their influences are songs that appear on this site.  In fact, they say that when they first heard the Louvin Brothers singing Knoxville Girl (a song we haven't gotten to yet), it changed their lives.  Did I mention that they are fantastic songwriters to boot? My Sister's Tiny Hands is one of the most haunting songs I have ever heard.  When reading about The Handsome Family, I have heard them referred to as a goth-country band, which I don't really agree with.  It seems the term goth is thrown around quickly these days and has come to basically mean dark music.  I would call The Handsome Family a dark-country band.  It is kind of hard to deny that.  But goth?  No, they are sometimes far to peppy in the macabre to really get that label.  However, I would say that My Sister's Tiny Hands is pretty damn close to that label.  It's got all of what you would come to expect from the old gothic classics: madness, ghosts, death and even a tiny bit of incestuous overtones in the opening lines. We came in this world together Legs wrapped round each other My cheek against my sisters We were born like tangled vines The lyrics to My Sister's Tiny Hands paints a very vivid picture to this story about about a pair of twins who live alongside a river and enjoying a presumably peaceful life.  All of that changes when the sister is bitten by a snake after falling into a briar and dies.  Alone, the remaining twin starts drinking and enacts revenge upon any snake that crosses their path. But still I heard her laughing In those wild, waving grasses Still her tiny hands went splashing At the river's sparkling shore Discover the rest for yourself.  If the lyrics of My Sister's Tiny Hands weren't haunting enough, the dark tones of the guitar accompanied by the sounds of the wildlife around them creates an even more bleak and disturbing landscape.  The song doesn't really have any overt horror to it but has a lasting creepiness that grows each time you listen to it.  The Handsome Family are a band worth discovering for yourself, though I will most certainly revisit them here again in the near-future.
Filed under: Music, Track of the Day	January 25, 2007, 3:34 pm | Permalink | 0 Comments
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