hearsay

I liked Dan Boeckner’s Wolf Parade side project, Handsome Furs, immediately. In press and in attention, he seems to play Phife Dawg to Spencer Krug’s Q-Tip: appreciated, but never escaping other’s shadow. But not unlike the way that Phife’s underrated Fu Schnickens colab stacks up against Tip’s, Dan’s Wolf Parade songs were often my favorites.

The new Furs album, Plague Park, gives me the feeling of ‘rock of the future.’ And I don’t mean in the sense of say a World’s Fair vision of the future with Jetsons flying transportation, I mean what we will really be listening to in 20 years or so. Synthesized keys and drums are found throughout Wolf Parade songs, but there is such a confidence in their use here… there is no hesitation in building entire songs around a couple synthesized notes. And despite their ‘out there’ sound, the songs are grounded in the traditions of rock & roll. The driving beat of “Dead + Rural” that is overlaid with echoing vocals and a repeating guitar line sounds like what Bruce Springsteen might put on his 2022 release (he’ll be 73).

The whole album revolves around a critique of place. While this is most obvious in “Handsome Furs Hate This City,” the theme didn’t really hit me until “Hate This City” ended up back-to-back with “Sing! Captain” on my ipod by accident. The melodies are so similar that I mistook them for a single track. Couple this with the thematic “hate this city” / “hate this town” lyrics, and the two tracks feel like a call & response. I liked the sequencing so much, I went all Remington on it and mixed it into a single 10-min track. I suppose it is a pretentious thing to do - as if I know better than the Furs how to present their songs… But remember; I’m the guy who thought that The National’s last album needed a full re-ordering. I’m opinionated, that’s why I write here.

My favorite lyrics on the whole album are on the “Sing! Captain” half:

And if there’s a God
He’s a little god
And he holds you closely
Inside these walls
But he hates his babies
Most of all

It reminds me of an argument that I think I heard Richard Dawkins make recently (although it might have been his grumpier neocon counterpart, Christopher Hitchens) about if we are to believe that the Judeo-Christian God is all-knowing, has planned out your entire life, and cares whether you believe in him/her or not; then that is a pretty pathetic and insecure God (not to mention, a bleak life for us, who are without freedom or choice).

: Handsome Furs - Handsome Furs Hate This City / Sing! Captain (custom mix) :