Live Review: Handsome Furs at Mercury Lounge [08.07.07]

**Warning: Nerd Alert**

Usually in sci-fi movies when they have a scene with a band in the background it’s completely off. It’s dated and out of touch before the movie is even finished shooting. I want to tell the directors of the world that the perfect ‘future’ soundtrack exists right now. I saw them play at the Mercury Lounge last night and their name is Handsome Furs. They even have a perfect back story that might even be true. (See un-futuristic illustration above).



First of all, there are less people in the future because there was obviously some kind of catastrophe or Armageddon, so less people learned instruments etc. They are too busy surviving. And then there are the two members of Handsome Furs, Dan Boeckner and his, as of two weeks ago, wife Alexei Perry. (Everyone cheered for their marriage and I witnessed the most unridiculous, unstaged kiss in between songs, I don’t know why it surprised me.) This ‘future’ band would have a guitar, of course, that’s classic, always will be. The accompaniment is electronic, taking the form of minikorg and a drum machine. These instruments make sense because they are portable and in the future you can’t have roadies, you can barely feed yourself. It makes sense you’re married, it probably started out as just a band, but it gets lonely on the road. Imagine some combination of roadwarrior vaudeville. The lead singer would be emaciated and angry, (again, the future is hard) and when he launched into guitar solo’s, which would be few and far between, he would completely destroy the guitar, it wouldn’t even be a guitar anymore, as if it’s an animal that he’s trying to fight off.



If you took a band like Yaz and had Joey Ramone or Tom Waits sing with tech heavy drums, the kind that won’t ever be mistaken for the real thing, either played or in sound and a distorted guitar sound so heavy with echo and reverb that it’s enough to fill the space completely. Not only is it far away sounding but turned way down, so you have this contrast of sharp tinny high hat and snare electronic sounds with a bass heavy wall of quiet sound and Dan’s half deep yell. It’s frightening.



Put all of this together with the fact that he is the ‘this heart’s on fire’ of wolf parade and not only is it the future, or a future, but a listenable, plausible one at that.