Handsome Furs: TAS In Session
It's not been an easy month for Handsome Furs. The married duo of Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry announced last week that, due to a "personal trauma," they had to cancel shows in Bucharest and Vienna. But this devoted couple, who make a point of touring far-flung locales from Seoul to Sibenik have always persevered, despite setbacks or struggles.
Their third album, Sound Kapital, out now on Sub Pop, reflects that wanderlust, determination and affection for the unexpected. The bulk of the album was inspired by the band's 2010 journey to Myanmar where they not only played, surreptiously in a tiny club, but also helped a local group, Side Effect, challenged by the lack of electricity or recording equipment, finish their album. Perry recently wrote up a list of 2011 highlights that defined Handsome Furs' remarkable year, from being interrogated in Sweden to nightswimming in Macedonia, here. They also maintain a thorough tour journal.
There is a chance to catch the Canadian couple playing Stateside; they kick off a brief North American tour, including dates in California and Arizona, in January,
Boeckner and Perry's new music might swell with synths and drum machines, but the rock and roll energy that defined their first two albums also guides Sound Kapital, with sharply-etched songs like the sinewy declaration "Serve The People," inspired by Side Effects and daily life in Myanmar.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIKeQTjeo0M]
Earlier this fall Perry and Boeckner, whose other band Wolf Parade is on indefinite hiatus, dropped by The Alternate Side for a fascinating live session, dipping into songs from their latest album. You can hear that session on TAS on WNYE this Friday, December 16, at 11 a.m. or streaming on The Alternate Side.
Alisa Ali: I heard a rumor that you guys met in a telemarketing office. Is that true?
Dan Boeckner: Yes, that’s absolutely true.
Alisa: I don’t see you guys as telemarketers.
Alexei Perry: Neither did we.
Dan: I had moved from British Columbia to Montreal and Montreal is French language first. My command of the French language, growing up on the West coast of Canada, was pretty much zero. If you’re an Anglophone, you don’t have any credentials and you’re out of work, telemarketing is kind of the best way to make money fast. But it also just totally destroys your soul. It was the bad kind of telemarketing, ripping off businesses.
Alexei: Little old ladies, actually. The [middle management] people in small businesses who didn’t know their jobs very well. We’d sell them business directories they didn’t need. And we didn’t do very well at the job. We just made out in the elevator instead. I think I made about ten sales, tops.
Dan: I think I made about ten sales too. The boss took me in one day and [asked me] why I looked sad all of the time? And I said, “Are you f***ing kidding me? I make 300 calls a day to people who are basically telling me they want to kill me. What do you mean, ‘What about my face?’” And then he threatened to fire me and I said, go ahead. Then me and Alexei quit at the same time.
Alisa: The same day?
Dan: Close. I hung on a couple more days. When I went to get my paycheck there were literally bare wires hanging out of the wall and the vending machine had been cleaned out. They’d skipped town. But that was the genesis of our romance.
Alisa: Do you still make romantic telemarketing phone calls to each other?
Dan: No, we don’t do that.
Alexei: We could fill in the blanks of the old script we used to use. Dirty mad libs for telemarketers.
Dan: No, we send dirty text messages to each other.
Alisa: How long have you been married?
Alexei: Four years.
Alisa: Is that still considered newlywed?
Alexei: I feel that way. I feel that we’re on a constant honeymoon. We get to travel so much and do so many great things. I feel like it’s constantly romantic, renewed and refreshed on a daily basis.
Alisa: That can be taxing. You saw what happened to Fleetwood Mac.
Dan: That’s true. But they were doing military grade amounts of cocaine.
Alisa: A lot of indie bands come in here and we give them guest DJ picks, they always go for the Mac!
Dan: You can’t mess with the Mac. I actually contributed a piece to that series 33 ⅓ for the Tusk book which was [dedicated to] their poorly received double album that followed up Rumours. There’s a chapter with me talking about Tusk. I love that record. I have a real soft spot for that record. I think it’s great and it was overlooked at the time. What’s really funny is that it sold 11 million copies in 1979 and that was considered a massive failure. Just to put things in perspective.
Alisa: You must have sold 11 million copies of Sound Kapital.
Dan: At least.
Alexei: By the third day.
Dan: It was good out of the gate. It leaked ten weeks before it was supposed to be released. That’s what happened to that record.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIi_KYWVBFY]
Alisa: That’s the lead off track from your new record. The first line is: “When I get back, I won’t be the same no more.” If anyone knows anything about you guys, this is probably a reference to you traveling throughout Asia for two years?
Alexei: Well, back and forth, between America and Europe.
Dan: We did a really big tour of Asia in 2009 and then we went back in 2010 and did another. It was like a month and a half each time.
Alexei: I lived in Beijing for a while.
Dan: We’ve been on the road since the last album.
Alisa: What is it like going home again?
Alexei: It’s hard. There’s obviously the culture shock of going between places, but for me, what’s most difficult is the pace of life. I feel that when we’re on the road, we’re witnessing so much that so few people get the chance to see and I feel energized by what we’re getting to see and do on a daily basis. Then I get back home and as much as I like my books and dead plants, I feel I need to get back out there and continue learning. It’s what I love most as a person and as an artist.
Alisa: So do you feel a little stir crazy after you’ve been home for a month?
Alexei: That hasn’t happened in years!
Alisa: You don’t even stay home for a month?
Dan: Not really. We did for a couple of months to make this album, but that was working. But the culture shock always happens. The further abroad we go and the more comfortable we get with these places that we go, the bigger the culture shock is. About three days ago we played a show in Kosovo in Pristina. It was this great show outside and we’d been in the Balkans for about a week and a half. Then we flew from Pristina to Boston to come back and do a show. And we were staying by the airport, in a specifically North American dead zone. Human purgatory, where you can’t walk anywhere because there are all parking lots. We got up in the morning and we needed breakfast, but there was nothing to eat except this sports bar for old people. I had this total moment of culture shock. I ordered an iced tea and [the waitress] went, “How big do you want it?” And I said, "Just regular." And she said it was cheaper to get the one that was two litres. And I was like, “Who the f**k is going to drink two litres of iced tea?” And then I went, “Oh yeah. I’m back.”
Alisa: Did you get the two litre?
Dan: No, man, no! Of course not! I can’t drink two litres of anything in one sitting! Maybe water if I were in a desert.
Alisa: A lot of this stuff I’ve been reading about this new album does talk about your travels across Asia. I know that you helped a band record a record.
Alexei: We got the chance to go to Burma — or Myanmar, depending on who you talk to. We weren’t supposed to be there as musicians, but [with the help of a local, punk-hearted band, Side Effect], we rented a karaoke place and did word of mouth promotion. We weren’t allowed to have postering or let anyone know about the show, but 300 kids showed up and it was one of the most meaningful nights of my life to play that show for these kids that never get bands touring. The only bands or orchestras that go to Myanmar play at embassies for the expats. To be able to do that was an inspiring thing to do. We stayed an extra week, went to [the band’s] makeshift studio.
Dan: Their studio was in an apartment building. There’s a public ordinance that if you build a building eight storeys tall, you don’t need to put an elevator in it. What happened is that the city developed and there’s only about two or three buildings that actually have elevators in them. So everyone who lives in Yangon lives in these walkups. These guys [in this band] are walking up eight floors. They had a system of pulleys to take stuff up and down from their window. They were using an IBM clone with Windows 96 to record stuff. They cobbled together a home studio.
Alexei: Practicing drums on pillows.
Dan: Their drummer practices on pillows and when they play shows, the club usually provides a drum kit. Because of trade embargos, they can’t get any equipment. And these guys are making $30-40 a month. That’s their income. So it’s not like they’d be buying gear anyway. But they still managed to make a record. They just didn’t have the equipment to master it properly, and they’re big fans of this guy named Harris Newman [Greymarket Mastering] in Montreal. So we got the record out of the country.
Alexei: It was smuggled to Thailand and then brought to us.
Dan: And we mastered it and had it mixed properly and had it sent back to them. They got it and it just passed the censor board two days ago which is amazing since nothing ever passes that censor board. These guys managed to get their record through. I’m happy because they’re going to put their record out. Their prospects — like Joseph, their guitar player — is either that [they] stay at home and make $20-30 bucks a month or they get a really dangerous job on a Thai frieghter that sails the Horn of Africa which is a target for Somalian piracy. So many kids from Myanmar get kidnapped on these freighters and there’s no incentive for the government to get them back. Right now, Joseph is facing this choice of [staying in the band] or signing up to a Thai freighter and sending money back to his family. Stories like that really informed this record and I think it changed my mentality about playing music a lot. I don’t know anybody back home …
Alexei: Who has to make those choices.
Dan: I go on a Thai freighter or I starve. It’s more like, it’s such a bummer that we can’t get good coffee on tour.
Alexei: Which is true. Dan: It made me buck up a little bit about touring.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-9-02g74qw]
Alisa: This is the first Handsome Furs album that was written exclusively on keyboards, right? Was it because you decided to write an album on the road?
Alexei: That was part of it. It was a practical choice. Also, mathematically, it suited what we were talking about more. To use that instrumentation over writing primarily on the guitar. We’re trying to write about the possibility of the future and things that we were witnessing. Competing noises of the cities that we were trying to replicate. I think it just suited the writing process a little better, using both synths and drum machine.
Dan: We wrote two records based around acoustic guitar. Like Alexei said, as soon as we started writing songs, it was obvious that it was going to be more electronic. So what’s the point of writing these songs on an acoustic guitar with chord progressions and then graphing it onto keyboards? We just skipped the guitar in the writing process altogether and then just layered it in at the end.
Alisa: Were you touring or just traveling?
Alexei: Oh, I’ve never been able to just travel. I never have that luxury.
Dan: We never went to Europe in high school. I went straight to work.
Alexei: We’ve had days off in cool places.
Dan: But there was never a “discovering” ourselves in Asia or Europe or having sex with Australian backpackers in Amsterdam.
Alexei: Oh, I don’t know,
Dan: Maybe on tour. But no, all the traveling we’ve done is touring. We’ve booked shows and played them.
Alexei: Which is hard work but really rewarding. I think it’s better for me personally than doing a touristy kind of travel. I get to be in this lucky position where everywhere we go, every city, country and small town, we’re meeting some of the best people in that place. The promoters, the fans, our fellow musicians, artists and writers. I get this actual glimpse into what a city is like. That’s what I want out of life. I also want to check out the Great Wall and see the sights, but I’d rather talk politics with the kids in Side Effect.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq1bb3n6beE]
