Sub Pop Records

HANDSOME FURS

Cold.
Alien.
Unfeeling.

These are but three of the misnomers historically assigned to electronic pop music. Yes, Wendy Carlos accompanied Stanley Kubrick’s dystopian vision of A Clockwork Orange with crude synthesizers, but that was 40 years ago! Forbidden Planet and its unnerving soundtrack by Bebe and Louis Barron haven’t been contemporary since Dwight D. Eisenhower sharpened pencils in the Oval Office. The suggestion that electronic music is somehow detached from the human experience is as outdated as the cakewalk.

Canadian two-piece Handsome Furs don’t just shrug off this myth on Sound Kapital, they reject it with every fiber of their shared being. Like Fad Gadget and Suicide before them, husband and wife Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry use keyboards and drum machines to forge life-affirming anthems taut with muscle and blood. These nine songs of innocence and experience occasionally look ahead to a better world in the not-so-distant future, but Handsome Furs know what time it is: Now. They are fully engaged in the moment and their surroundings, wherever that may be.

Sound Kapital is the first Handsome Furs album written exclusively on keyboards though guitars are still heavily prominent in the recording. This was a conscious decision, made for a few reasons: a) it forced Dan, whose primary instrument is guitar, to find fresh avenues of expression; b) it facilitated writing on the road. The latter concern is especially important. Even with their new analog synthesizers, Handsome Furs can still fit all their gear into a subcompact car—or the saddlebags of a camel. Alexei and Dan have joked about being “closet journalists,” but this is no laughing matter. Being able to work as they travel permits visceral editorializing about…