Magnet talks to the Handsome Family‘s Brett and Rennie Sparks. On songwriting:

Brett: When you’ve been called “the Gomez and Morticia Adams of country music” enough times, you will fucking take off your little gothic cowboy hat.

Rennie: You have a gothic cowboy hat? Is it made of cobwebs and lizard skin?

Brett: I got a cobrasnake for a necktie.

Rennie: Honestly, though, when you try to write songs you don’t think about what other people will think about it.

Brett: I kind of do. I want to write things that will satisfy my … spectral need. [Laughs] I want to make my stuff so that it works for people. I don’t have exclusionary intentions. I’ve been through all this shit; I wrote abstract, atonal music, I worked in prepared piano music, I went to school and studied bullshit harmony and counterpoint for no reason, but I try to take that stuff and roll it up into a little ball that people can play with.

Their new album, Honey Moon, is due April 14 on Carrot Top.

We interviewed Rennie Sparks about a hundred years ago: The Glorious Noise Interview with the Handsome Family (2001). Those were the days.

MP3: The Handsome Family – “Darling, My Darling” from Honey Moon.