Album review: The Handsome Family, Wilderness (Loose)

The Handsome Family, Wilderness (Loose)

A sort of bestiary of myth, legend and animal analogy, Wilderness uses wildlife traits as jumping-off points for enigmatic tales in typical Handsome Family manner.

In “Caterpillars”, a woman hit by lightning gets cocooned by caterpillars; in “Flies”, as General Custer's body stains the earth blood-red, Brett Sparks muses on “how beautiful he looked to the flies”, his morbid baritone swathed in groaning harmonium. From one man convinced that owls are stealing his pills, to another sure octopuses are trying to lure him into the water, it's nature at its creepy-crawliest, with fittingly wyrd-folk arrangements.

Download: Flies; Owls; Octopus