Face Control- Handsome Furs

Frantic lyrics shouted over funerial keyboard tones paired with jarbles of messy, yet spot on synth tones to make a tortured but beautiful mess (listen in "Officer of Hearts" or begining of "Radio Kalininbrad"). Speed up the beat and turn the "frantic" to "on the edge of madness" and you've got an Handsome furs anthem. Perhaps all this energy bursts forth from Boeckner's inability to truly go nutty with Wolf Parade? Or mabye his wife and partner on the drum machine is the culprit...And then they can take a 90 degree turn and sound like a post-post-millenium Cure (All We Want, Baby, Is Everything), go figure- great stuff though, might as well let them explain it themselves...

"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..." (http://www.myspace.com/handsomefurs)







From the past blogotheque...






A favorite from their past album; wait for the break, its fantastic, let it wash over you