Handsome Furs - "Face Control" review

yes, that's a real, purchased CD...whoa

This review starts with HMV. If you ever want some music, but don't actually want to find it and buy it, it's your kinda store. I went in looking for Japandroids a couple months ago, and after two or three trips plus a couple phone calls, all I ever heard was that the store had the vinyl of Post Nothing, but not the CD. I dunno who was stupider, the guys there who never knew/never told me the band was never going to put out a CD, or me for only bothering to find that fact out a few weeks after my search started.

Needless to say, when I went looking for Face Control, they didn't have it. Kudos to them for ordering it in for me quite promptly, but still, the multiple trips isn't what I look for when I'm buying music.

That aside, the real impetus for buying this album was Handsome Furs' great performance at Virgin Fest in Halifax earlier this month. After quickly browsing Pitchfork's review, I decided it was worth it to buy the album and check it out myself. The packaging was of course neat, if the CD itself wasn't a little hard to locate and slide from its delicate pouch (which valuably had the tracklist printed on it...creative, but not necessarily logical). So I popped it in and listened to it on my long-ish commute home. This was last week, and between my desire to review the album over the last few days and the unforeseen dead battery of my mp3 player this morning, I think I got four or five listens to thing in that time.

What I can draw from all of it is that perspective has a lot to do with things. Albums themselves are alot like singles really, in that sometimes you'll hear something and go "whoa, I need that, that's awesome" and just put it on repeat for days. Other times, you'll know right away something isn't to your taste, and you probably won't give it another chance.

To be honest, my first listen to Face Control had me fall somewhere right in the middle. The duo (of Wolf Parade's Dan Boeckner and his [very hot {buy the CD for the liner's topless pics...I'm serious}] wife Alexei Perry) really know how to market themselves, because other than their earlier work and their great live show, I really only knew two singles off the album, and one of them was much better for me than the other. So kudos to them as well, for enticing me to dish out $22 for 12 songs-worth of album on the strength of two songs and a concert.

By now, I know this review might be a little like "Cannot Get. Started" off HF's debut album Plague Park. My apologies, so I'll get to it. The album has grown on me more every listen. I've picked up on little nuances, and I've also come to realize that sometimes an album that has a lot of the same sound isn't always all it's cracked up to be. The first listen, I couldn't even distinguish when one song started and the other began. All the same distorted and droning guitar, slaps, drum machines...they all just flowed together, with nothing markedly standing out from the rest. This is strangely an album where it doesn't pay to listen to it back to front, the way most LP's are supposed to be structured.

So I threw the thing on shuffle today. And lo and behold, the album had a completely different sound. There was some variety, and it wasn't all just one melting pot of songs. There's still the same structure for about 10 of the songs (intro, verse, verse, solo, verse) but you can start to pick out the differences when the tracks are out of order. To go back to my first point about an album being like a song, it really is that strange macrocosm. You look for that nice slow intro, a few good songs to pick it up, that middle section that really establishes the album, maybe a little lull or some weaker tunes, a song or two that hits it out of the park, and maybe a slow finish to wind you down. I can't help thinking of a batting order in a baseball game in terms of setting the table in that same way.

And I looked for that with this album. That middle section is definitely there with lead singles "All We Want Baby, Is Everything" and "I'm Confused," and the other elements are there in bits and pieces, but there's really not that variety in sound and even soundscapes that you expect other albums to have. Even when someone like Joel Plaskett does a concept album, there's still a lot of variance between tracks. Maybe it's the fact there's only so much two people can do with the music, but I found Japandroid's twosome to be varied enough in it's rhythms and song structures to keep me rapt from front to back on their release. At some points I know I definitely yearned for Handsome Furs to add a real drummer and see where it could go, but no chance of that realistically happening.

Boeckner's voice is as yappy as the dog on the album cover, and the pain in his voice is palpatable when he yelps out his lyrics. There's definitely some duplication and filtering going on, but it's not over the top and it doesn't really hurt the delivery at all. It seems hidden under the rest of the music, but the simplicity of his lyrics still manages to help them shine through. Another aspect I found, that's quite hard to put into words, is that the music seems very closed in.

I mean, don't get me wrong, the band's a hell of a live show, but it's like they recorded the album in a little box, with all the sounds bouncing off of each other, and that constant drone in the background. Again, it's not a knock on it, because I love that kind of music, but for 12 songs, it can get kind of monotonous. You get the feeling you just want one of the songs to explode, Dan's voice to rise above everything, the drum slaps to crash down, and for the band to deliver some knockout punch that never seems to come. "All We Want..." comes closest to fulfilling that promise, and it's apt to be firmly entrenched in your head with it's shrill synth and talks of building a heaven...but you can't help but feeling there's that next level the duo could reach.

Many of the songs overall have a really diverse feel to them. "Officer of Hearts" seems like it could've been the featured beat on a mid-90's West Coast gangsta-rap album, while a lot of the other tunes have feelings of country, dance and Dinosaur, Jr.-flecked noise rock - sometimes all at once. I was quick to describe their live show as a band combining equal dashes of dancefloor-ready synth and drum machine with distorted indie rock, but without those huge speakers and Alexei's spirited interpretation of her cold and metallic instruments, those sounds seem a little lost on the album itself.

Now this probably comes off as a pretty hard review overall, but that's not to say there aren't highlights. At least half the songs have a good mix of shout-along verses, rousing breaks and grooving beats. There's a harpsichord-ing instrumental jaunt on the quite-short "(White City)." Tunes like "Evangeline" and "Thy Will Be Done" will make you beg for more in-your-face Handsome Furs, and "Talking Hotel Arbat Blues," funky name aside, has to be the most fun on the whole album, from the chugging backbeat to the perfectly messed-up stadium-ready guitar. "Nyet Spasiba" is another one I would've liked to see the duo build on through the album, with some real excitement brewing during the track. Handsome Furs certainly have pop sensibility, and they're all the better for it when they decide to employ it.

Maybe it comes back to perspective again. I have to catch up on my Wolf Parade, so I'm not sure if this marks a sharp detour from Dan's work with that critically-acclaimed and well-loved group, but I'm not sure if he's breaking new ground here. I'd love it if Handsome Furs could step out of their comfort zone, experiment a bit, and churn out something unexpected. Nothing really jars you out of the dark and heavy haze of the overbearing percussion of the album. A guitar stab here and there is about all you get.

Who knows, maybe this is experimental and different for some people. It just isn't that way for me though. With all that said however, I still love Handsome Furs, can't wait to see them in concert again, and look forward to their next album. Now excuse while I go find that album liner...