Handsome Furs were the duo of Dan Boeckner and then wife and poet Alexei Perry. Formed in Montreal in 2006, it was meant as a side-project for the ever musically active and tireless rocker in Boeckner and for a short time, became his main creative outlet when Wolf Parade went on hiatus in 2011.
Boeckner and Perry released three full-length albums in a six year span under the Handsome Furs name before the duo split musically and otherwise. I remember being super disappointed because they had been slated to the 2012 rendition of Ottawa’s Bluesfest and I noticed one day, on one of the many instances of checking the lineup for new additions, that their name was subtracted without an explanation. It’s a shame, really, that I never got to see them. All three of their albums are quite excellent. This little regret is only slightly tempered given that I’ve since seen another of Boeckner’s projects, Operators, as well as Wolf Parade perform at Bluesfest.
“Sound kapital” is Handsome Fur’s third and final album and Boeckner’s first ever written completely on keyboards, rather than guitars. The album was inspired by Eastern European industrial and electronic music from the 1980s but if you think that will mean an album of austere and frigid numbers, think again. This is Dan Boeckner, the embodiment of Canadian indie rock. There’s plenty of guitars and his raw, Bruce Springsteen-like vocals breathes life into the genre.
“Dogs in the capital howling at dawn
Someone’s driving by with the radio on
Someone making noise from the center of town
You kick em in the head and you kick em when they’re down
and you don’t serve the people”
“Serve the people” starts off with the lines above in a croon, sounding like it’s coming from a different age through broken speakers, and then, it changes with the introduction of synthesizers and an electronic beat. There’s steam and factory sounds and weird washes and wah-wahs and plenty of other noise muddying the stomp of dance floor rhythm. And somehow it all turns into a fist pumping anthem with Boeckner leading the charge, a guerrilla revolutionary with dishevelled hair and a cigarillo dangling from his lips. Yeah, serve the people, Dan.
For the rest of the Best tunes of 2011 list, click here.
(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)
Artist: Stars Album Title: Set yourself on fire Year released: 2004 Year reissued: 2012 Details: Black vinyl, 180 gram, repress
The skinny: Fresh off seeing the Canadian indie pop collective last night at the National Arts Centre with the house orchestra as support, and where they performed the song below, “One more night”, “Your ex-lover is dead”, and others off this very album, I thought I’d spread some Stars love this morning. Released in 2004, “Set yourself on fire” is likely still considered the band’s high water mark, despite releasing five very fine albums since and still touring regularly to appreciative audiences. This album, along with Arcade Fire’s “Funeral”, was a big part of the reason that the world turned their collective ears to Canada and we had an indie pop renaissance of sorts for a few years at the beginning of the 2000s. This is big, bold, and beautiful sounding chamber pop (which leant itself well to orchestra accompaniment last night) and an album that was amongst the first that I sought out after starting my fledgling vinyl collection.
Nap Eyes are a Canadian indie rock quartet led by Nigel Chapman. All four members originally hail from Halifax, Nova Scotia, but only Chapman remains there. The other three, Brad Loughead, Josh Salter, and Seamus Dalton, have all relocated to Montreal, which one might think would cause problems with recording new material. However, I’m learning that it’s actually not an uncommon situation these days with technology being what it is: bands don’t always have to be in the same room to record a great and cohesive album together.
But I digress.
I came across Nap Eyes a couple of years ago with their sophomore album, “Thought rock fish scale”, and happily, got to see them perform live for free at the Ottawa Dragonboat festival the same year. Their sound appealed to me right away. It’s lazy-sounding slacker rock but nowhere near the same vibe as Kurt Vile or fellow Canadian, Mac DeMarco, neither of which particularly appeal to me in the same sense. No. These guys remind me of an underrated 90s dream pop band called Luna but also very much of The Velvet Underground, particularly if “Sunday morning” had been the template from which all their catalogue was cut. It’s mellow but it rocks, and absolutely, Nigel Chapman’s conversational singing tone evokes those of Lou Reed and Dean Wareham. His lyrics are weird, seemingly stream of consciousness monologues, rife with both the mystical and the mundane, the loose frays and discomfiture not at all hinting at the career of his other life as biochemist. Yeah, they’re an interesting group.
“I’m bad now” is the group’s third long player and is seen in some circles as the final part in an unofficial trilogy. On this outing, they pick things up a bit. At moments, it’s quite upbeat in pace but I still wouldn’t call these songs rockers in the traditional sense. Sometimes they plod along and sometimes they burn slowly, hinting at a build that never quite explodes, and sometimes they just hum and tear, thrilling in the journey rather than the destination.
Like its two predecessors, “I’m bad now” works as a complete album, bucking the current trend towards singles. All eleven songs work just as well as standalone pieces as they do as part of the whole. So though it was a tough task, I have separated out three picks for you to sample. Enjoy.
“Follow me down”: This here’s a song about going for a walk and it carries on with a cheerful gait, the tap-tap on the drum rim, the bopping bass line, and the gentle strum on the guitar. It has the feel of old style folk music but with a wash of reverb underpinning it all. And Chapman is inviting us to join him on his early morning stroll, early to try to beat noise, physical and otherwise, that comes with all the people. But no matter, he’s got his earphones in: “Classical Indian ragga twenty minutes long. Then I listened to old American folk song. A little bit shorter, still a lot going on.” Keep up with him, please, he’s a got a good pace this morning.
“Dull me line”: “Dull me line, running abandoned race tracks in my mind. Dull me heart, heavy with bored and lazy disappointment art.” The chorus line, which in a bigger, stadium friendly band might incite a raucous sing-along, was Chapman both being frustrated with writer’s block and being easily distracted. The guitars are jangling and shimmering and often give way to messy, Velvet Underground-like mini-jams throughout the song. It’s a great tune to bop along to. Yeah, just close your eyes and ride the waves. Yeah, man.
“Roses”: Here’s an example of Nap Eyes in an upbeat, uptempo moment. It’s got a driving beat and roaring guitars and feels like it’s going to be much longer than its three plus minutes. It just has that feel, like you’re in for the long haul and you don’t mind at all, the rhythm is nice but Chapman doesn’t give it to you. Instead, he gives you more of his honest and insecure and curious thoughts in the form of lyrics. “Somebody sent you roses. Now what do you do with them? You’ve got no reason to trim them. No nice place to throw them. Because it doesn’t seem right to throw them away. Yet you can’t very well send them back the other way.” Hilarious and poignant and so much why I love this band.
Check back next Friday for album #2. In the meantime, here are the previous albums in this list:
My (life in) music lists 