Handsome Family – Live: At Schuba’s Tavern / Blue Mountain – Tonight It’s Now or Never
Once upon a time, the Handsome Family hated music and they took it all out on you. Rennie Sparks, a solo performance artist and author of comically disturbing fiction, would cover a show’s many flaws with off-the-cuff non-sequiturs about, say, squirrels and strawberry ice cream. Brett Sparks played his outrage and alienation on guitar. From that period came the couple’s first record, Odessa, a passionately slung together clarion of punk angst irretrievably tethered to Brett’s Texas upbringing, where from birth the influence of country and church choir music was engraved into his bell-clear baritone.
Through four subsequent albums, the Sparks grew more comfortable with themselves and made the simultaneous discoveries that they could write and compose starkly beautiful, even hopeful, ballads, and that people loved them (well, some people). Brett began finding a much broader range for his aesthetic on ProTools, which also enabled the pair to replicate their evolving lush production values and innovative “instrumentation” onstage.
DCN (Digital Club Network) captured the Sparks at the top of their game in Chicago with Live: At Schuba’s Tavern on December 8, 2000. The eighteen-song set draws from all their recorded works except Odessa. Brett’s guitar can still seem desolate and outraged, even mordant, but the beauty of his electronic compositions is fully realized and faithfully recorded. Rennie paints primary colors on bass and seasons the program with her characteristic, offbeat commentary, capturing for the first time on record the spark in the Sparks’ live shows.
By contrast, with Blue Mountain: Tonight It’s Now Or Never, DCN created an essential double-disc document of Blue Mountain at the end of their game. Laurie Stirratt and Cary Hudson were at the brink of pulling up stakes and going their separate ways as of this March 11, 2001, show at Schuba’s, a stop on their tour behind the band’s final release, Roots.
Stirratt’s voice hangs back a bit in the mix in a way that now seems prescient in view of Hudson’s recent solo career. The record highlights Stirratt’s fine sensibilities on bass, but may disappoint fans of the couple’s gruff and tender harmonies.
Hudson rocks a vocal range from Bruce Springsteen to Richard Thompson, and plays guitar like the Southern boy he is — now metalhead, now heart-ripping blues stylist, always full-tilt. As fans came to expect, the energy in this Blue Mountain set never flags. Even the traditional songs from Roots, and the slower songs such as “Soul Sister”, are clangorous renderings of the pair’s passion for performing.
The set concludes with “Go ‘Way Devil”, a traditional blues song from Blue Mountain’s debut EP; in retrospect, it’s a fitting bookend for the opener, “Young And Tender Ladies”, from Roots. As the crowd shakes the walls with applause and catcalls, Hudson says, “See you next time,” and Stirratt adds, “We’ll be back soon.” They sound like they had no more idea than the crowd did that this would be Blue Mountain’s last appearance in Chicago.