Last Days is easily the duo's most thematically consistent set of songs.  Full text...

An excellent album  Full text...

Songs of weirdness and wonder, set in a half wild, half urban, entirely mysterious place where trees that grow in small squares of dirt hide man-eating boars. All this will be no surprise to fans of the Americana duo's last six albums, all home made, this time in their New Mexico garage, its lo-tech instruments (banjo, steel guitar, Mellotron, bowed saw) recorded on a Mac.  Full text...

Although their entire catalog this far is remarkably solid, Last Days of Wonder probably one-ups its predecessors as a consistent band’s most consistent album.  Full text...

Set to unfussy arrangements of pedal steel, banjo, organ and guitar, with a few details provided by poignant horns or bowed saw, these songs are deceptively undemonstrative, returning to American country music some of its spiritual mystery.  Full text...

Last Days of Wonder finds the Handsome Family hitting a comfortable stride. Seek out their work.  Full text...

Recorded in Sparks' home studio, the album captures a clean intimacy that sets up a dialectic as profound as the concept of good and evil itself: one writes, the other sings (although Rennie provides backing vocals and sings the lead on one); they play modern American roots music, and record it on a computer; they sing sometimes joyous melodies about decay and loss.  Full text...

No music fan who appreciates good storytelling can deny that Rennie Sparks is one of the most original and talented lyricists in indie music today. Until Last Days of Wonder, her husband, Brett Sparks, has consistently rivaled her ability on the songwriting end of things.  Full text...

The husband/wife duo of Brett and Rennie Sparks have always sought to wrest as much mystery and romance as possible from their seemingly mundane modern surroundings, crafting an impressive, finely attuned catalog of urban ghost stories, death ballads, and fatalistic country narratives.   Full text...

Masterful use of words and phrases - hats off to Rennie - creates images that concur subtle connotations and often eschews rhyme for storytelling. It's far from pop and doesn't cater to a short attention span, which in-and-of-itself, is refreshing and heartening to know that somebody, somewhere, is still doing things this way.   Full text...