Someone with a warped sense of humour should turn Albuquerque's The Handsome Family into a teatime TV show: The Adventures Of Brett And Rennie Sparks.

Episode one: Brett and Rennie stop for coffee in the Redwood forest.

Episode two: Brett and Rennie find a bottomless hole in their back yard.

Episode three: Brett and Rennie escape from an air-crash on a raft of skin and bones.

Christmas special: Brett and Rennie take a trip to A&E. The dynamic of this relationship is as compelling as the real and metaphorical horrors it conquers.

As Rennie fights her way through deadly swamps, eagerly hitching her black lace skirt, Brett is always by her side, grumbling about the state of his suit and tie as he swats off giant slugs with his banjo.

Brett's wife of 18 years, lyricist Rennie, has what intimidated teachers would call a vivid imagination.

On Saturday she stood squarely in her spotlight, hands held politely by her sides, introducing love songs about death rays, garbage dumps and accidental slaughter (the latter sweetly dedicated to "all the lazy animals we saw napping along the highway").

Brett set them to a limping country gait and sang them with a flat, disinterested baritone while Rennie added beautiful, whining harmonies and blew innocently on a mouth piano.

"The doctor says I have to play this for 20 minutes a day," she said. "It helps me cut down on my spells." The Handsome Family brought with them a third musician whose job, aside from adding keening violin parts, is to safely navigate the tour van.

Howe Gelb and band had grander plans, offsetting their wry, stiff-jointed alt-country with the vibrant, fluid gospel of the nine-piece Voices Of Praise Choir.

"It's been ecstatical to acquire a choir," commented the sometime Giant Sands frontman, an instinctive poet whose narrative style and worldworn croak make him the Lou Reed of the Arizona desert.

While the soaring synchronicity of the choir highlighted the anthemic quality of tracks such as Love Knows No Borders, the hook was Gelb's idiosyncracy.

When he filled the piano with percussion instruments, minor chords rattled like the crippled hearts of which he sang.

After throwing the soundman a tambourine and urging the choir into a closing chorus of Oh Happy Day, the stylishly dishevelled Gelb ducked out of the party, slowly wrapping himself in the stage curtain until only his trilby remained to applaud.

If I didn't have to file this review, I like to think I'd be setting off for a remote log cabin furnished only with Howe Gelb and The Handsome Family's back catalogues.

From laugh-out-loud humour to tear-jerking poignancy, these doyens of the new American fatalism made for uniquely rousing company.

Not just a staggeringly good - and staggeringly good value - gig, Way Out West was much-needed nourishment for the soul.