Handsome Furs June 10, 2009

Handsome Furs are not a message band and they are not political, but Handsome Furs are a message band and they are political. The juxtaposition of cold, metronomic, electronic beats, courtesy of Alexei Perry, with the jagged, dissonant and frail, broken or breaking, guitars of Dan Boeckner portray what it is to be a human being at the bottom of the 21st century. It underlines the confusion you feel as your best friends are conveyed to you via a series of ones and zeros passing through lines and cables and microwaves; the same confusion felt witnessing the pure, wholesome thrill of a band of musicians pouring their hearts out on stage, through someone’s cell phone as pixelated streaming video; the profound and bitter frustration of your long-distance relationship with the world up against a burning, alcohol-soaked sunrise as you admit some things you never thought you would; your constant feelings of inadequacy intertwined with the omnipotence modern technology grants us all. You are there, yet somehow you never are. As we all are and are not. You are left with a rhythmic and empowering programmed beat interrupted by the warm, reverberating fuzz tone of vibrating strings on wood hit hard enough to shatter skyscrapers. Over it all a perfectly imperfect voice roars images of landscapes, maps of forgotten continents ripe with history, and you are left feeling as human and alive and wide-eyed as you should be every single morning.

These are not concept albums, but there are concepts: Plague Park was Scandinavia as the couple experienced and envisioned it, jagged and pure landscapes, the melancholy yet hopeful air of April skies shining over frozen tundra, massive pine forests and an always looming Lutheran work ethic. It was slower; evoking images of a glacier creeping over mountains, moulding valleys and fjords, at the same determined and hardworking pace at which the region became populated and that population formed its stories. FACE CONTROL has a similar geographic appeal, moving on to Eastern Europe for inspiration, echoing through empty skies and frozen plains.

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