NEWS: The Handsome Family @ Sage Gateshead

We live in a world where The Handsome Family’s breakthrough song Far From Any Road has been used by Guns’N’Roses as walk-on music. This is remarkable both because, well, what the fuck? And also because this ‘breakthrough’ happened twenty years and around ten albums into a career that saw them adored and feted by a few but not exactly household names.

Which is a disgrace of global proportions, because Brett and Rennie Sparks have been writing and performing some of the most singular and affecting music around for three decades now. What they do is Gothic country-folk, if you’re being reductionist, but it’s a music that’s full of melancholy and wonder, frogs and ghosts, broken machinery and damaged hearts. And their live performances – either as a duo or with a guest or two – are unique and glorious.

So it’s very good indeed that they’re heading back to the British Isles for a lengthy tour that will bring them to Sage Gateshead’s Hall Two on Friday 9^th September. They’re not promoting a new release – although apparently that’ll happen next year – but any Handsome Family gig is an event in itself.

The Handsome Family play Sage Gateshead on Friday 9^th September.