"This is a sad song," said Rennie Sparks by way of introduction. "It’s so sad we thought perhaps we shouldn’t put it on an album – but people seem to like it" – and so The Handsome Family kick of the first show of their U.K. tour at the Brudenell in Leeds on Wednesday, May 16th with "Weightless Again". It seems odd at first, most performers would surely 
save their best known number for closing the show, but the Handsome Family do not do predictable and the song sets the tone for the rest of the evening.
That night they seemed to be concentrating not so much on the broad vein of dark humour, which runs through so much of their material, but on songs whose subject matter may appear at first to be merely odd or quirky, but which on closer inspection reveal themselves to be small, fragile psalms to quotidian tragedy, shot through with sometimes almost unbearable poignancy and sadness. In these snapshots from chaotic lives women starve to death while their boyfriends eat hotdogs and weep on the fire escape, men lower themselves into the earth in the doomed search for the bottom of bottomless pits, Christmas revelers fall asleep with blood on their teeth while their wives sneak out to the car to make a bid for freedom. Brett Sparks’ voice seemed deeper than last time they appeared in Leeds and he crouched over his guitar 
like a bearded corduroy bear while Rennie’s vocals seem frailer and more remote than ever.
If it all sounds just too depressing for words then it needs to be observed that the songs are also very funny, and the conversation between Brett and Rennie ensured that the evening never became maudlin. At various times the discussion turned to turtle porn (shell on or shell off), the correct use of italics in a bibliography, and the quality of backstage graffiti. Rennie was impressed by a large arrow in the dressing room, which points at nothing and bears the legend ‘insert picture of penis here’. It’s hard to tell at their shows just how much is scripted and how much extemporized, but their on-stage relationship recalls husband and wife comedy partnerships of the 1950s – part squabbling, part exasperation but always affectionate.
Whatever they do, the crowd lapped it up – they have a large and loyal following in Leeds and looking round the audience and watching people’s lips moving it was clear that most people in the room know most of the lyrics and most people are smiling as they sang along – because in the end although these songs may contain more than the usual quota of death, sadness, dead giants and people who want to be like a bucket of milk they are also joyous evocations of the strangeness and wonder of everyday life. People like that stuff.
