On an understated tenth LP, The Handsome Family are content to stay in the shadows

"Far from Any Road", from their 2003 LP Singing Bones, was plucked from obscurity to be used as the theme tune to the first season of HBO’s True Detective. That fact is plastered all over the promotional materials for their first full-length to be released since, Unseen; if they’re reluctant to dine out on the connection, somebody forgot to tell their publicist. It wasn’t just the apparent media ubiquity of the series that propelled husband-and-wife duo Brett and Rennie Sparks into the limelight - it was the fact that the song in question, thick with atmosphere and foreboding, felt like an eerily good fit for the murky, McConaughey-fronted tale of a murderous cult in the backwaters of Louisiana.

In that respect, The Handsome Family should really be a shoe-in to soundtrack next year’s Twin Peaks revival; they’ve long sounded like David Lynch’s idea of a country band. They’re the picture of classic Americana on the surface, with Brett’s fabulously rich baritone underpinning the standard instrumental palette of banjo and acoustic guitar, but their lyrics are laced with dark humour and there’s usually enough subtly off-kilter sonic choices to unsettle the listener a touch.

There’s nothing in the way of a bold step forward on Unseen, which is the wooziest collection of songs they’ve put out in quite a while; this is very much an album for the wee small hours. If anything, there’s probably a few too many bare-bones compositions here, "The Sea Rose", "Tiny Tina" and "Underneath the Falls" all amongst them. It’s on the cuts where there’s signs of progression that Unseen excels, not least because the duo pull them off with real nuance every time; the fluttering strings on the standout "Back in My Day", for instance, or Brett’s sinister vocal turn on "Gentlemen". In some respects, it’s endearing that they’ve stuck so resolutely to their guns post-Detective, but in others, you wish they’d perhaps rolled the dice with a little more vigour.