Quick Before it Melts

Thursday 14 April 2011

What about us?

I love Sunset Rubdown, and Swan Lake and Frog Eyes are pretty cool too, but if I have to be honest about it, Handsome Furs is the Wolf Parade splinter band that makes my wood hard.  The chemistry between Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry is a foregone conclusion given that they’re married to each other, but when the two set out to make beautiful music together (literal as opposed to figurative) nothing in the world is hotter.  Although, judging by some of their promo photos, their figurative music-making could probably start fires, too.

It took me all of three seconds to concede that “What About Us”, the first single from their third LP Sound Kapital, is the sexiest single of the year, and possibly the best thing Handsome Furs have ever programmed.  They’ve made a conscious decision to embrace electronic music on Sound Kapital, the first album they’ve ever written exclusively on keyboards. The bestial beats, slick production value, and their adept skill at writing simple, catchy pop songs are all evident here, but so is the longing, the passion and the humanity that have always marked Handsome Furs out as being more than just a cold, detached dance band.  In the first half of the song, Boeckner chides the world to “go on and break my heart, a sentiment that’s echoed in the emotive coda, this time as a wounded, dejected statement after getting exactly what he’d been asking for.  Bloody brilliant, this.

Sound Kapital is set to hit the stores on June 28 via Sub Pop.  Can’t.  Fucking.  Wait.

MP3: Handsome Furs “What About Us”
Facebook: Handsome Furs
Twitter: Handsome Furs

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by J. Di Gioia | No Comments »

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 14th, 2011 at 8:35 am and is filed under MP3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.