Dan Boeckner earned his laurels as the guitarist behind the textured riffs that put Wolf Parade on the indie rock map, where critics lauded him as an ideal neo-traditional foil to Spencer Krug's weird, experimental musical departures. Then Boeckner teamed up with then-girlfriend Alexei Perry to form Handsome Furs. Their 2007 album "Plague Park" hinged on the sparked rhythms of a vintage drum machine and the duo's cerebral lyrics. Boeckner and Perry later got hitched, Boeckner kicked off a worldwide tour of Wolf Parade's "At Mount Zoomer," and by the end of the year SubPop was spreading new word of a second Handsome Furs album. "Face Control," released on March 7, 2009, dives further down the sublime rabbit hole of literary minimalism that defined "Plague Park." Clubplanet spoke with the hot 'n heavy pair from Montreal about their new album, travels abroad, the trouble with threesomes.
Clubplanet: Just to get the literal question out of the way, why did you name your album after a bouncer practice in Eastern Europe?
Alexei Perry: We named the album "Face Control" so that we could let all the fans who would otherwise be rejected by harsh door policies into the club. Also, the two words sound good together.
CP: What was your biggest musical evolution between "Plague Park" and "Face Control?"
Dan Boeckner: Faster tempos, listening to Eastern European punk music, and the Super Oscillo Fuzz.
CP: Plague Park was completed with a vintage drum machine. Have you upgraded to something more modern?
Dan Boeckner: No, we haven't. We bought a machine drum but we've stuck to using the crappy nineties techno beat maker we used on Plague Park.
CP: We can definitely pick up on some cowbell in certain songs. Any other unusual instruments worth noting?
Alexei Perry: There's digital cowbell being used. Also we used an ARP 2600, a Roland Space Echo, a Farfisa, and a crappy late 70s digital delay unit. We're pretty anti-laptop-and-ableton-combo.
CP: Both your albums have been based on geography, and Face Control is specifically influenced by impressions of Eastern Europe. What was the personal connection to that part of the world?
Alexei Perry: I think we both grew up hearing Cold War era paranoia about that part of the planet and we wanted to learn the current realities. Once we started touring extensively through the Eastern Bloc and Baltic countries, it was hard to keep that imagery out of our work. We very much fell in love with the culture and architecture and people.
CP: It might be too soon to ask, but do you have any predictions for the next part of the world that will inspire an album?
Dan Boeckner: We're hoping to go to South East Asia this year.
CP: Alexei, you're also a short story writer. Are you able to keep up the mental energy to write when you're touring?
Alexei Perry: Fortunately, I'm able to do a lot of writing while on the road. I'm a firm believer in the fact that the more you experience, the more you have to write about. I am frequently in the back seat of the car, possibly hungover from the previous night's show, working on new things. I've written a ton of stuff this year during our tour travels.
CP: Songs like "Legal Tender" hit a raw nerve in light of the economic climate. Has the recession changed anything for you guys as musicians? Has it made touring harder?
Alexei Perry: I think it's too soon to tell. I am hopeful that depressing times require mood elevation or cathartic entertainment. Playing in a place like Serbia, you find yourself less insulated by distracting media and advertisement against the reality of the impending collapse of the Capitalist economic system. We wrote “Legal Tender” in Eastern Europe with a window looking out on the West and it's coming financial fall.
CP: Face Control's influences seem as much derived from current social theory as contemporary music. Were you reading anything in particular while formulating the album's concepts?
Alexei Perry: Here's a list of some books we were reading while writing the album: Black Earth, Guerilla Radio: The Story of B92, Possibility of an Island, Rising Up Rising Down, The Ends of the Earth, The Balkans, McMafia, Koba the Dread, The Foundation Pit, Envy, Heart of a Dog, The Lost Cosmonaut, Europe Central, Young Stalin, Mao, The Post Office Girl, Kaput, etc.......
CP: Dan, is it harder or easier touring with your wife?
Dan Boeckner: Easier.
CP: Has touring as a married couple diminished potential groupies? Any awkward encounters?
Alexei Perry: No. There's been no shortage of offered threesomes.
CP: What's your favorite city to play? Any favorite music venues?
Dan Boeckner: Helsinki has always been a tremendous favourite to play for. As for music venues: Club Ikra in Moscow, Club Depot in Riga, Kset in Zagreb, Academy in Belgrade, Debaser in Stockholm. Domestically: the Bowery Ballroom in NYC, The Empty Bottle in Chicago, the Troubadour in LA, Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco and Lee's Palace have been pretty sublime times.
