The Handsome Family

The Tolbooth, Stirling

Four stars

The Handsome Family, aka Brett and Rennie Sparks, are in a nostalgic mood. It’s been 20 years since their debut album Through the Trees and they arrived in Stirling to celebrate the anniversary. Well, that and the fact that they’re still alive and still married, Rennie told us at the beginning of the evening.

As the couple merrily bickered and kvetched at each other for the next hour and a half you could just get a sense of why the latter might be their biggest achievement. That’s when you weren’t thinking there’s a basis for an alt-country sitcom here.

The comedy of it was half the fun of the night. Rennie has a deadpan way with a killer line, but mostly it was the marital disconnect that amused. She would introduce most of the songs with a story, while Brett would either grumble and mumble off-mic or talk across her. She’d be chatting about crows and depression and snowy winters in Chicago. He’d be lamenting the death of the music industry.

And then they’d launch into another murder ballad from Through the Trees, ably accompanied by Alex MacMahon on guitar and keyboards and Jordan Toth on drums. And suddenly the couple were in harmony again. And not just vocally.

With two decades of experience to draw on, perhaps it’s no wonder that the music had an easy, loose-limbed swing to it. But it was Brett’s basso profundo vocals that were the band’s special effect. If Orson Welles sang Americana it might sound like this.

The evening peaked with a spare, spooked version of Last Night I Went Out Walking before a sometimes messy encore that slightly disappointed. But you couldn’t fault their atmospheric take on Far From Any Road, or the “True Detective” song, as Rennie called it. Brett had an alternative title: “HBO Money.”