Melbourne writer Ben Gook is currently in Berlin, eating $4 felafals, trying to stay warm and checking out the nightlife of the big grey city.
Handsome Furs
Bang Bang Club, Berlin
Monday 9th February, 2009
It’s 1 degree outside with a chance of snow, but in Bang Bang Club, it’s all sweat and t-shirts. The heat’s a mixture of an excited core of fans - thrashing until their horn-rims almost fall off - and a packed venue. It’s packed even on a Monday - although time, like everyone else in Berlin, is “freelance”.
Most of the heat is radiating off the stage. Handsome Furs are a passionate couple, high on something, a duo that can fill any stage. Here tonight ahead of their second album release Face Control, they’re giving the crowd a run-through of that record’s new sounds (less reverb, more direct). Or, rather, the crowd is giving them an indication of how far and wide the album has already leaked. New songs are greeted with whistles and cheers. Why have official release dates anymore? Just let thing out into the wild and let it roam.
The Furs - Alexei Perry (wife) and Dan Boeckner (husband and frontman of those other worldly Canadians Wolf Parade) - regularly brush up against their self-imposed limitations: vocals, a drum machine, a keyboard, a guitar, an amp and effects pedals. This is a simple palette to work with, but they manage to sketch out a few different shapes with it. Often, the sound is pared back to base elements. Kick. Snare. Clap. Kick. Snare. Clap. Vocals. Tambourine. In verses and intros, Perry and Boeckner stay out of each other’s way, letting the clamour of their union raise the roof on some anthemic choruses and crescendos.
And there are plenty of them. Pushing beyond the usual comparisons to Beck’s voice, Boeckner sounds like Springsteen more than once tonight, tremulous and overwhelmed. On stage, Furs get up a strut and cocksuredness that The Boss can summon with that trademark vibrato in his voice. (See 'Legal Tender,' on the forthcoming Handsome Furs record.)
Part of the Bossness, too, is the enormity of Boeckner’s guitar sound. A metallic, cutting sound. Classic rock is in the background of all this, but there are some punk and post-punk sounds in the mix. Boeckner looks like a combination of Joe Strummer and Mick Jones - semi-quiffed, unshaven, grizzled, sleeveless t-shirt - and there’s a bit of Clash spikiness to the sound coming from his amp too.
But Boeckner, above all, is a master of the guitar pedals - pushing from wiry lead line to heavy, clamorous, reverby chords, filling the room. Over Perry’s simple, blocky drum programming, Boeckner takes the burden of all the dynamics via voice and guitar - ain’t no dynamics in a drum machine.
Although they run a good set, all of this can tire. The band’s "thing" is clear: 80s and 90s hip-hop and electro inflected drum programming with overdriven, rock guitar and anthemic vocals. “We’re going off to smoke some cigarettes and get drunk,” he announces at the end of the encore, to no one’s surprise.
You get the sense that many would willingly join them. Showing true personality on stage, unabashed, the Handsome Furs make the show an intimate one. The crowd have lapped it up and warmed to them throughout the set. In the reciprocity innate to small club shows, the Furs have responded in kind, telling us that they were nervous before the show (more nervous than when they play in New York, they say, but most of their NY friends live in Berlin now...), but their fears were quickly assuaged. At least in this time and in this place, Berlin loves the Handsome Furs—and they seem to love it back.
Ben Gook