Wolf Parade side-projects tend to sound a lot like Wolf Parade. Thats a good thing if you like Wolf Parade and cant wait for their next record. Its not such a good thing if youre a band concerned about being typecast. Handsome Furs, however, is not a Wolf Parade clone, so if youre looking to get your fix, you wont ย not completely.
Handsome Furs is the duo of Dan Boeckner and his wife-to-be Alexei Perry, but they sound larger than a twosome, maximizing the potential of drum machines and technology to achieve this. Unlike other Wolf Parade projects, the rock element has been mostly removed; the arrangements are often guitars with โstuffโ going on in the background that sometimes anchor things down, like on opener โWhat We Had.โ At other times, the mish-mash of the drum machines and synths becomes tedious, like on the nearly six-minute โDumb Animals.โ That said, its still nice to see Boeckner experimenting a bit, even if in the end, the results are mixed.
This article appears in May 24-30, 2007.