Handsome Family
But the problem with alternative country is that most reproductions of traditional rural music are too slavish or too campy; either way they come off as shallow. Not just the lyrics but the very inflections of rural music are informed by the day-to-day cares of the people who make it. Those might originally have been the hardships of the farm or the cruelty of the coal mine, but if some college-educated city hipster truly yearns to create music in the same vein, he owes it to the tradition to reach deep into his own daily hardships–the crappy subsistence jobs, the nasty breakups, the shady landlords–in search of the ancient clay. Because one also owes it to the tradition not to pretend to be less sophisticated than one is.
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Of course, it’s the transcendence that’s key–and it’s Rennie’s ability to tell a story, plain and simple, that transcends the limits imposed by where and when she had the luck to be born. Her respun tall tales, like “The Giant of Illinois” (who died from a blister on his toe), come side by side with her own pinpoint-accurate depictions of mental illness and mortal fear in the here and now. (On the day “The Woman Downstairs” starves herself to death, Brett mourns, “When the wind / Screamed up Ashland Avenue / The corner bars were full by noon.”)
