Handsome Family/ Jim & Jennie & the Pine Barons / Maxwells / Feb. 25, 2000

Chicago-based husband/ wife duo the Handsome Family offered a post-midnight Maxwells audience drifting rural folk, thrifty country-laced dirges, and surreal soft-rock ballads. Besides performing a solid hour of lonesome prairie waltzes, desperation-bound vignettes, and contemplative down home morsels, the Sparks’ kept everyone in attendance in stitches with their sharp sense of humor and scrappy Sonny & Cher-styled bickering.

Making fine use of banjo, dobro, melodica, and autoharp, Rennie Sparks filled out beau Brett’s somber acoustic arrangements. Brett’s flexible voice ranges from a deep-toned Merle Haggard-like baritone to a stately Richard Thompson-like croon. Highlights from this Friday night set included the sonic guitar turnabout, “Amelia Earhart Vs. The Dancing Bear,” and several newly waxed trax from the ambitious, delicately orchestrated In The Air (Carrot Top).

Diligently coalescing beauty and sadness with similar haunting intimacy to the Mekons’ Jon Langford and Sally Timms (whom they’ve toured with in the past), the Handsome Family continue to refine and rejuvenate their understated musings.

Beforehand, Jim & Jennie & the Pine Barons enthusiastically re-created old-timey bluegrass and rural back porch Country & Western with heartfelt assurance and an uncanny authenticity atypical for such young, fresh-faced practitioners. Within the span of a few songs, the wholesome quartet from Croydon, Pennsylvania, had loosened up fans gathered around the formerly empty spot at the foot of the stage. Huddled behind a single mike with banjo, upright bass, acoustic guitar, and mandolin, the rootsy combo broke into a few Flatt & Scruggs-like instrumental hoedowns and traditional fare by the Carter Family, Frank Wakefield, and others. The quick-paced “Hot Burrito Breakdown” (credited to the Country Gazette), a few rustic originals, and some silly between-song patter kept the set moving along briskly.