Something From Nothing

“Last Days of Wonder” certainly isn’t the kind of record you’d go to for rich melodies and catchy arrangements.

Quite the contrary. The Handsome Family (the husband/wife team of Brett and Rennie Sparks) seems to have taken odd pleasure in creating a series of slow, meditative songs focused more on the poetry of mundane surrealism than musicianship. In fact, if they hadn’t thrown in the occasional waltz-time composition, it might be easy to think that “Last Days of Wonder” is just one very long song.

Indeed, when they do try to inject variations on the drone, the addition of a banjo or a saw played with a bow, for instance, the results seem quirky and disconcerting.

What makes “Last Days of Wonder” interesting is Rennie’s lyrics, mixing common details from the world around with a strange sense of foreboding.

The set begins, appropriately enough, with “Your Great Journey,” in which the narrator is caught up in the largeness of the universe, the complexity of life and the fact that he seems to be disappearing before his own eyes. The narrator in “Tesla’s Hotel Room” finds empathy with the science-driven imagination of Nikola Tesla, drawing word pictures of him nursing sick pigeons while dreaming of a deathray that will disintegrate matter.

There’s an engaging sort of paranoia of “All the Time in Airports,” or perhaps it’s just longing for a lost loved one as the narrator keeps catching just a glimpse of someone at a nearby x-ray machine as he pulls off his shoes, or sees the ghost of his companion flipping through magazine pages or passing by on the moving sidewalk, “But each time I get too close, you always disappear.”

While “Last Days of Wonder” isn’t likely to become a favorite party record, it’s an interesting meditative set, full of humor and observations about the bizarre coincidences and contradictions in our lives.

(This review originally appeared in the Go! section of the JournalNews, June 30, 2006)