Last Night: Handsome Furs at Bacco Room

Handsome Furs w/ Brand New Math
Bacco Room, Auckland
Tuesday August 25

I had been anticipating this since the Handsome Furs announced they were touring here a couple of months ago. The Canadian group, which consists of Dan Boeckner and wife Alexei Perry, recently released their second album ‘Face Control’. The album was similar to their first, ‘Plague Park’, which showed Boeckner move slightly away from his acclaimed work with Wolf Parade. On ‘Face Control’, they sound terrified of the future, yet more concise in their musical ability. Boeckner’s sometimes frail vocals contrast perfectly with Perry’s simple and uptempo drum beats, which seem to make even the dull moments in their music stand up straight.

The Bacco Room saw an almost full house of fans go a little crazy for the twosome. I have to give kudos to the dude in the front row who, despite his friend/girlfriend seemingly telling him to button up,  insisted on keeping his shirt unbuttoned while the band played. Ha. Speaking of style, Alexei Perry had it down. Barefooted, she stomped and proceeded to writhe on the ground, in some sort of orgasm-like trance. I’m not even going to describe what she had on but I’m sure that if you were there you would undoubtedly agree that it was something else. Still, it worked.

And so did a lot of other things. The group opened with ‘Legal Tender’, the first track off ‘Face Control’ that saw them move from subdued to unshackled and then back again. After that, the group set about playing more of the gritty tracks that make up most of their new album. Another new song, ‘Evangeline’, seemed to be a crowd pleaser, especially when Perry exclaimed, “this song’s about fucking!” Funny thing is, there isn’t really anything in the song that actually eludes to that. All up, they played for about an hour, which included the shortest space between the end of their set and their encore I have probably ever seen. I’d say they were gone for about 40 seconds. Still, their brevity was easily forgivable and it seemed to do them a favour even though everybody would have liked to see have seen more.

Elsewhere, Boeckner name dropped as many New Zealand cities as he possibly could and cited buying an album by The Chills when he was younger. Obviously, they came prepared. The venue lent a nice intimacy between the band and the crowd. The stage was scattered with fairy lights and it was a tight squeeze up front. Overheard: “Hey, we should go get a booth!”

I have to hand it to the group. They have mentioned before that their lack of a drumkit and the amount of money they earn from playing allows them to travel to places other bands normally wouldn’t. After playing Australia next week, they head to China, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Thailand. I’m sold.