Husband-and-wife Brett and Rennie Sparks have the entertaining spirit of a sweetly bickering couple whose little digs are actually a sign of their abiding love. Brett writes woozy, elegiac alt-country with traditional country and Tin Pan Alley undertones. ("That's what you get with a degree in medieval composition," Rennie cracks.) She's the wordsmith burnishing a fascination with decay and dissipation from a mall reclaimed by nature to downbeat confessions: "If my life was as long as the moon's, I'd still be jealous of the sun/ If my life lasted only one day, I'd still be drunk by noon." They're brilliant and criminally overlooked. Phatlynx opens. —Chris Parker