handsome fur by amanda

A Week With Handsome Furs' "Plague Park": Day 2

27 June 2007
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Words by Tony Conte // Illustration by Amanda Walker

Plague Park is an album of references to failing love, and failing hearts in an angular, mechanical world. With this album, Handsome Furs are building a machine and the whole time lamenting the machine built around them. Still, the irony is not lost on them.

“We hate this city, filled its drone/So black out million screens, And wire up the floor/Baby we can get you anything you want, any time you want/But you won’t know what it’s for.”

It isn’t catchy melodies that make this album indelible, but rather the deep, dark textures created together through layers of droning keyboards woven through lone guitars and steady beats.

The lyrics carry us through city streets, and remind us of the loneliness in being trapped so close together.

“I stood outside in the bright black night/Beneath their buzzing power lines “

Such clarity of purpose fills the album. Take, for instance, the album art: two photographs of the artists themselves with guns, a t-shirt reading “Merle Haggard,” images of disgust and resignation. Then the drawings: the cover an amalgam of drawn eyeballs which have settled (the color of flesh) overtop of a human skeleton which on closer inspection reveals the blueprints of a home or railroad apartment. The ribs of the supine human remains appear to be the legs of a woman walking away.

Handsome Furs owe as much to The Cure’s “Pornography” for the sound of this album as they owe to David Bowie’s early years for the introduction of such drama in their packaging. Take a peek at their video for “Dumb Animals” and you’ll see their schtick. (Right now a million teenage White Stripes fans are searching “Bowie” on Wikipedia while insisting — just beginning to grow unsure of themselves — that Jack and Meg created melodrama in rock music.)

The restless guitar work slices through emotionless beats, while Boeckner’s heavy hearted wail laments existence in every form, longing for something that may never have been. His voice, gone gutteral, echoes up as if from the bottom of a deep, deep well.

This album leaves much for thought. After only a few listens it’s evident that we are dealing with more than a minor gem in the guise of a simple, retro homage to the early 80s.

Sub Pop Records

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