Posts Tagged ‘Wolf Parade’
Handsome Furs @ Black Cat
It was one helluva anniversary: Montreal’s Handsome Furs make minimalistic indie rock whose hopeful, searching tones never wholly camouflage a certain postmillenial anxiety, and there’s nothing in it you’d call “cute.” Not so last night. The husband-and-wife duo—Dan Boeckner, who shares frontman duties in Wolf Parade, and Alexei Perry—commemorated their second year of marriage with a keyed-up crowd at the Black Cat, torpedoing through the best parts of their two-album catalog (and a pair of new songs suggesting fresh sonic territory). Throughout the evening, they often stepped back from their mics to join foreheads and noses; in forceful numbers like “Talking Hotel Arbat Blues” and “Nyet Spasiba,” the two lunged at each other with an erotic charge.
Often, Handsome Furs’ songs thrive on tension, but in concert the prevailing mode was ease. “I almost barfed” backstage, Boeckner joked at one point. “I still barfed,” Perry quipped back, but it was hard to believe them: They were having too much fun.
