Handsome Furs @ 7th St. Entry

When your only complaint leaving a show is that the band did not play a long enough set, it is pretty safe to assume it was a great show. The Handsome Furs played an amazing, albeit short, set Thursday night for a sold out crowd at the 7th Street Entry and further cemented (in my mind) the fact that their sophomore album, Face Control, is the best album to be released this year.

(video by Brody McCoy)

The husband and wife duo of Dan and Alexei Boeckner, sauntered on stage slightly after 11:30 pm looking like a Canadian version of Sid and Nancy (if Nancy wore jean-shorts). The band wasted no time before tearing into a blistering version “Legal Tender,” which also serves as the opening track on Face Control. Dan’s guitar work, as it was the whole night, was commanding as it added a perfect blend of growling distortion and rich melodies. Alexei was a few feet away working the synths and drum machine, which cracked out the booming rhythms and added a rich texture to Dan’s angular guitar work. The band kept up the frenzied pace with their next song, “Talking Hotel Arbat Blues,” their most pop-driven song to date. Dan stood on his toes and wailed out the searing vocals, with spit flying from his mouth and the veins in his neck protruding as he screamed the song’s lyrics. The highlight of the song came when the guitar dropped out and left only Alexei’s crackling drum rhythms, which produced a release for the building tension of the song, and allowed the duo, along with a majority of the crowd, to really let loose. “All We Want, Baby is Everything” followed next with its straightforward drum beats and Dan’s ringing guitar lines. While Alexei mostly used her mic to emphatically thank the crowd and talk about how much they love Minneapolis, she did join in with her husband during the chorus of this great song.

Next up was the slightly more downbeat “Evangeline.” With Alexi doing her one foot hop, Dan delivered his simple but powerful guitar licks, belting out the lyrics “We hardly ever summer, and it goes to show.” At this point in the show, with the crowd steadfastly behind them, they played the first single they released from the album, “I’m Confused.” When the clapping bass and snare drum beat started, the crowd responded instantly, which seemingly provided Dan and Alexei with a burst of energy, which was probably unnecessary as they were already jumping all over the stage. The chorus, with Dan’s slicing guitar work and wild singing, completely brought the house down. They followed the momentum of that song with the Face Control track “Nyet Spasiba.” At this point, I think the band could have played Bread covers and still gotten a rapturous response, but luckily for us they continued to highlight the strong and versatile tracks from Face Control.

Like their set at the Entry last fall, the band shied away from playing tracks from their debut album Plague Park in favor of the newer tracks from Face Control. It wasn’t until about three quarters of the way through their set when they dusted off the first track from that album, “Handsome Furs Hate This City,” which was excellent. Before the song, the band let the crowd decide which city it hated the most, with any city in Wisconsin/Iowa beating out the left field submission of Omaha. The band said the slow burning song was about Toronto, but no matter what city they were talking about, it was great. Dan put down his guitar and moved over to the keyboard, with Alexi shifting to the side of the setup to work the drum machine. With its heavy organ layers and dreary lyrics, “Handsome Furs…” was a great interlude between the more frenzied material from the rest of the set. Among all of his work, both with Wolf Parade and solo, Dan’s existential outlook has never been summarized more clearer than in the middle of “Hate This City” with his extended moaning about “life is long, and hollow.” The couple, who are seemingly still in honeymoon-phase, spent a lot of the night interacting during songs, and it was cool to see them face to face, looking each other in the eye while they performed this outstanding song. The band ended the set with a stirring version of the last track from Face Control, “Radio Kaliningrad,” and while it isn’t my favorite track on the new record, it came across with an urgent intensity that seemed to bring together the whole set and left the crowd cheering full voiced as the couple jumped off the stage.

The band returned seconds later, cigarettes in hand, to perform a two song encore. They started out with a new song, which featured the pulsing bass and stinging guitar work seen on Face Control, and made me excited for their next release (which hopefully won’t take two years to record, as has been the trend). They finished the set with the Plague Park song “Dead + Rural.” Dan introduced the song by saying it was about being from a “po-dunk”town, which he described as being an American term. One of the more upbeat songs from the duo’s debut (and therefore the one that would have fit in best on Face Control) was an excellent choice end to the set with. With its rolling drum beats, Dan gave an impassioned vocal performance and both artists really gave their all on the final song. When they were done, they thanked the crowd over and over for being so receptive, and the crowd in turn thanked them back for such an excellent show. Unfortunately after roughly 45 minutes the set came to an end and the exhausted crowd filtered out onto 7th street to remissness about the great show they had just seen.

The Handsome Furs, which began as a side project for Dan and Alexei, has increasingly shown that it has become something far greater than its original intention. With the release of Face Control and a string of shows showing their commanding live performance, the band should no longer take a back seat to any other of the duos’ projects. I don’t know if there is an extra connection between husband and wife during a musical performance, but these two have something going on that is proving them to be one of the most exciting acts in music right now.

[Review by Josh Keller, photos by Jon Behm.]

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Also: Handsome Furs “Face Control” Review