I have never bought anything from American Apparel. Ever. In some way, buying a deep V would cement something I have never truly given in to. Deep down, I just want to be a hipster. The sort of hot sexy hipster who wears cute briefs, slams L.A. folksters, drinks Sparks and after-after parties it with the Cobrasnake.
Unfortunately, I’m just a semi-literate college grad with not enough devotion to singular existence (hipster) and therefore I just judge and lightly paddle in weekend drinking/the occasional music column. Additionally, I’m immediately devoted to any artist who seems to live hip.
Dan Boeckner is one of those artists. Let’s set up the back story. He’s one of the founding members of defining modern college rock band Wolf Parade. He’s married to a super-sexy writer named Alexei Perry. Together, they also have a band, Handsome Furs. Said band recently released the new album “Face Control,” a drum machine/guitar-shredding epic named after an Eastern European policy where a patron buys a seat at a strip club but may still not be let in because of looks.
“Face Control” is the sound of everything hip having sex right in front of you. Drum machines, wicked guitar, noisy pop, synths, New Order references, anthemic lyrics and Springsteenesque jams. “Talking Hotel Arbat Blues” name checks Dylan and then sashays between Springsteen and the Clash until the drum machine drives into pure noise. In fact, it becomes downright creepy how recognizable the whole album gets. Listening to “All We Want, Baby, Is Everything” feels like so many other songs, but in a glorious way of someone cementing and delivering on what you love.
“Officer of Hearts” is the clear frontrunner of the album. Handsome Furs hit the same sort of epic jam on their last album, “Plague Park”, with the song “Handsome Furs Hate This City” and here they deliver just as well, if not a little more. Boeckner howls over electro-pop for the first half before cascading the song into indie rock anthem by saying: “Our love is lost and found.” The song locks into groove and pumps back out, building in complexity, as the lyrics rotate around relationship battling.
Handsome Furs is my musical equivalent of Bret Easton Ellis (“American Psycho,” “Rules of Attraction,” “Less than Zero”). Way, way too hip, in a way I never could be. But way too good to stay away from enjoying.