Consumer Guide Album

Handsome Family: Twilight [Carrot Top, 2001]
At a moment when any depressive with a good line of patter is positioned to convince disaster-dazed dissidents he's the prophet Jeremiah, lyricist Rennie Sparks and her doleful husband and music provider Bret deliver a new sheaf of morbid songs. These feel right even when their melodies dim out, in part because they aspire to mood rather than prophecy. More than half concern or mention animals, usually but not always still alive. One significant exception is a billion passenger pigeons, another the dog, cat, gerbils, goldfish, rabbit, chipmunk, squirrel, and insects to whom she/he bids so long. Right, the pets are supposed to be funny, in a morbid way. None of the humans who populate this album are so lucky. A few of them are deaf or blind, though. A-