HANDSOME FURS hit the Garrison June 18, 1 am, as part of NXNE. See listing. Rating: NNNN
When rock spouses Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry made their fantastic Face Control album in 2009, they were already a well-travelled band. Their journeys through remote eastern European regions informed that record’s aesthetic and revealed the Handsome Furs’ burgeoning anthropological taste for exploring/documenting cultures. Boeckner and Perry have since had their passports stamped in Southeast Asia and China, playing shows in places where most groups wouldn’t venture.
The unending lights and sounds of Bangkok, Manila and Beijing inspired the duo’s most electronic and propulsive album to date. Boeckner’s guitar, though present and biting, is mostly background to Perry’s jittery electro-pop synth lines. The lyrics, as on the excellent Repatriated, are inspired by all the striving unknown bands they encountered and played with and who gave them reason to come home and create Sound Kapital.
Top track: Bury Me Standing
