Handsome Furs - Live Review

In Salient - Sept 2009

SFBH - 26 August 2009

Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry would make the coolest parents ever. Hailing from Montreal, the husband/wife duo make up electro punk act Handsome Furs, in Wellington at the SFBH for the first time as part of their tour for their latest album, ‘Face Control’. Gaining major respect before the gig had even started by setting up and soundchecking their own instruments, by the end of the show the Furs had the audience in the palm of their hand with their captivating mix of screeching guitars, hard-hitting beats, truly awesome stage presence and heartfelt performace.

With the majority of their set coming from ‘Face Control’, the Furs had no trouble finding backup vocals from an appreciative, fan-filled audience that eagerly joined in with Boeckner’s emotionally strained delivery of songs such as ‘I’m Confused’, ‘Evangeline’, ‘Legal Tender’ and ‘Radio Kaliningrad’. Equally appreciative of the enthusiastic support Boeckner and Perry repeatedly thanked the audience throughout the show, highlighting the colonial link between their home country and ours, where “we both have the Queen on our money, and nobody knows why”, while Boeckner endeared himself further to the audience with his boyhood tale of discovering New Zealand through Bailterspace and The Chills and dreaming of visiting here.

Handsome Furs’ music meshes together a number of opposites, mixing masculine and feminine, howling, emotive guitar licks with processed beats, and bare, tender verses that burst into loud, strong choruses, and their performance reflected this, managing to be equal parts cuteness and badassery. Boeckner’s guitar playing was violent at times, thrashing at his strings seemingly haphazardly but always finding the right notes, while Perry cued her beats and played her keys with an irrepressible energy, bouncing around the stage and dancing around her equipment in a way that transformed what could easily have been a boring task into something much more. Together they were an electrifying presence on the stage, putting on one of the least pretentious and most involved performances I’ve ever seen, with the only flaw being the set’s tantilisingly short length.