The Handsome Family like myths and folktales and scary stories. Brett has a deep, resonant voice that turns pleading and mournful in its higher ranges. He sounds like a man who has put aside a task—working in the fields, or running a general store, maybe being a funeral director—to make music. Music on the side is, of course, a venerable American tradition. Many vernacular musicians of the early twentieth century were dance musicians before they were entertainers. His melodies turn where you don’t expect them to or linger on a phrase where other songwriters might end it. He is a resourceful narrator and storyteller, but most of the tempos are dirgelike, and you have to accept that events will unfold according to his preference. If the difference between art and entertainment is that one form attempts to express a pressing and self-defined truth, and the other seeks to provoke, for gain, a reaction in an audience, then the Handsome Family are more artists than entertainers.
