The horror of the human mind when it won’t rest, eh?

Given their association with the TV series True Detective (their song ‘Far from Any Road’ was the theme tune of its first series), it shouldn’t be too surprising to find The Handsome Family on this list. In fact, many of their songs function like short stories. Take ‘The Snow White Diner’, in which the occupants of a diner watch a car containing a deceased mother and children being hoisted out of a river, or ‘So Long’ in which the narrator bids adios to all the pets he ever owned, as well as “whatever was in that hole that I raked over”, and lists the manner of their deaths.

In ‘The Bottomless Hole’ a farmer discovers “the mouth of a deep dark hole” behind his barn. He tests the depth of the hole by chucking stuff in – broken tractors and dead cows, that kind of thing -– but never hears anything hit the bottom. So, unable to stop wondering if what he has here is a bottomless hole, he does what any reasonable person would do in that situation and makes himself “a chariot” using ropes and “a rusty clawfoot tub”. He then bids his wife and kids goodbye and rides down into the hole. Having cut himself free when he ran out of rope, he’s singing to us as he falls. He can’t remember his name. All he knows is that he must satisfy his mind as to whether or not this damn hole he’s in is, as he suspects, bottomless.

From the album Singing Bones, Carrot Top Records, 2003