The Handsome Family - Far From Any Road

I have just watched the entire season 1 of the HBO series True Detective, one of the best TV shows I have ever seen, up there with The Wire, Breaking Bad and a few others. What's so astonishing about True Detective is its enormous depth, with layers upon layers that work in perfect tandem with each other, the script, the photography, the acting, the direction, the music... everything fits. The opening vignette is wonderful, as is usual for possibly all HBO series, with The Handsome Family's "Far From Any Road" building an eerie atmosphere before the show has even started. The song is set to a series of troubling images, and the song itself is also built of quite unpleasant imagery. Husband and wife Brett and Rennie Sparks have released ten albums under the moniker The Handsome Family, and this song is from the seventh, 2003's Singing Bones, a disturbing title if there ever was one. But what a song "Far From Any Road" is, sounding not unlike something Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood could have done, only darker.

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