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August 15, 2007
Handsome Furs - Live @ the Mercury Lounge, 08.07.07
* Devon Banks was out of town, so these swell photos have been Flickr-napped from one Jamie Kleiman, whose work you should further investigate here.
The word I keep coming back to when seeking to describe the Handsome Furs' New York City debut last week is "sweaty." The Mercury Lounge was certainly cooler than the city street and though full, there weren't so many bodies that you felt perpetually trapped in the sphere of your neighbor's body heat. The recently married duo that comprise the Furs had a fair amount of glisten to them, but no more so than anyone exerting effort under stage light. It's the music itself, that gives the perspiring feeling. Alexei Perry's rough mechanical beats and bloody synth throbs are the hot sweat, sweat from dancing in motion in a warehouse or someplace that's not quite sanctioned for top line sound. Dan Boeckner's jagged guitar bursts the cold sweat, sweat born from anxiety and desperation. As soon they took stage and launched into Plague Park's "What We Had," there wasn't a dry brow in the house.
They played each and every song from Park, in arrangements that were quite faithful to their recorded versions though in a slightly altered order. Dan Boeckner attacks his guitar, shaking it violently as if the sharp chords are lodged tightly inside and he desperately wants them to fly free. His gaunt appearance resembles nothing so much as a young Iggy Pop who decided that not eating was a better plan than exercise and thus has no strength to be that kinetic. His energy is more internal and intense than flashy. But focusing on the sketchball looks or jerky movement does injustice to the fact that the man writes affecting and anthemic melodies. It was impossible to listen to a song like "Cannot Get Started," to Dan emoting with his hungry heart on black sleeve, without being reminded of Bruce's earnest populist hits.
Dan's lovely wife Alexei looks like trouble. From my dimly lit vantage point in the crowd, it took me a good deal of internal dialog to decide that the large wing configuration on her chest was a chunky necklace and not an aggressive tattoo. A crowd member bellowed that she looked like Cleopatra, which was fairly accurate as well, to complicate matters. She played her broken synths and bargain drum patterns as intensely as her mate, thrusting her hands down violently as if practicing CPR on a dummy with no give. Songs like "Dead + Rural" were entirely dependent on the push she gives them. There was a palpable sweetness on stage as Dan interacted with his new wife, so I'd feel awfully guilty getting crude to describe the effects of performing with such commitment in a flimsy tank top. The word "pendulous" shall not appear in this review, you have my word.
The one new song performed was entitled "Heaven" and billed by Boeckner in advance as "sounding like New Order," though it actually sounded like Wolf Parade, or you know, Handsome Furs. It was also improbably explained as being written about seeing the Jeremy Piven vehicle Smoking Aces in sunny Estonia. "You know how Jeremy Piven is sorta good in Entourage? Well this was like that but worse," said Boeckner with surprising pop culture acumen for an occasionally Luddite lyricist who emphatically wants to "black out a million screens." Despite the English language being littered with suitable rhymes like given or livin', there were no discernible references to the life and work of Mr. Ari Gold.
After they'd cycled through all of their known works to an ecstatic crowd reaction, they decided forgo the usual encore fan dance by proclaiming that there was only one other song they even knew how to play, namely the aforementioned Tom Petty classic, "You Got Lucky." Though the kids can't help but sound slightly spooked and creepy, the sentiments behind the song were obviously heartfelt. In between teeth gnashing guitar solos or stuttering beats, there was the unmissable delight of two people who realize that good love is indeed hard to find, and luck is as good a word for the eventual bond as any. These tender drops in the otherwise dark pool aptly illustrated that New York was also got quite fortunate that the long paranoid arm of the law finally chilled the fuck out enough to let the lovebirds enter our country from the wilds of the north at long last.
Posted by Jeff Klingman at August 15, 2007 12:45 PM
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Comments
hey uhhhnnn thanks. i like what you said.
Posted by: Anonymous at August 17, 2007 11:10 PM
