Dan Boeckner, of recently-on-hiatus Wolf Parade and the Handsome Furs, is a punk at heart. His strength stems from quick detonations of feeling—blasted to the limit by his flailing guitar and impassioned lyrics—that leave both Boeckner and listeners exhilaratingly drained. On his latest release with bandmate and wife Alexei Perry, Sound Kapital, he continues to follow a slow arc from fiery guitar rock towards an electronic pulse, and the result is an album of ominous—yet catchy—synth-heavy melodies. But a cluster of overlong songs and the dampening of Boeckner’s guitar dilute his trademark urgency. While Sound Kapital is enjoyable, it loses its way in thickets of drum machines and synthesizers.
On the Furs’ previous album, Face Control, Boeckner melded his punk spirit with dancier beats to produce music that compelled hip movement while also delivering grim statements about love and disillusionment. Face Control was both danceable and blisteringly profound, and it rarely lagged.
In contrast, Sound Kapital has a pacing problem. Too many songs shoot past four minutes, and all the short songs but one are packed at the front end, risking single-mindedness on the first half of the album and making the second half slow going. Face Control showed that Boeckner can pull off longer songs—the fantastically apocalyptic “Radio K”—but he is best working off a shorter platform, e.g., “Talking Hotel Arbat Blues.” Some of the beats on Sound Kapital are excellent: “When I Get Back” builds around attractive synth stabs, “Memories of The Future” sends keyboards stuttering on top of a low throb. But “Bury Me Standing” sounds too similar in tone and structure to these two songs. “Serve The People” has a ponderous stomp. The next two tracks (both released in advance), “What About Us” and “Repatriated” are uninteresting, leaving a vacuum in the second half of the album.
Boeckner has always used simple repetition to increase the power of his vocals. But combining this songwriting preference for reiteration with repeating synth codas can also strip phrases of their meaning. On “What About Us” or “No Feelings,” excessive repetition (both songs are more than five minutes) desensitizes, and words lose importance. “Damage” avoids this, pulling you on a fiery ride buoyed by Boeckner’s gruff howl, a skittering drum, and two synth notes played over and over (it even uses a rare momentary lapse of synths to increase its visceral kick). When he says “Do the right thing, baby” I feel guilty for jaywalking this morning.
The incendiary guitar work I expect on Boeckner creations appears more sparingly in his new material. On Sound Kapital, the fuller beats don’t provide clear background for the guitar to shine, and Boeckner often buries riffs, using them more to emphasize hooks and add a sense of menace than to anchor songs. “Cheap Music” is an exception: waves of guitar gallop next to synths and engulf from the get-go, and by the time Boeckner starts singing, you’re already carried away by the tune. Album ender “No Feelings” (performing at Maxwell’s in 2010, Boeckner dedicated it to the recently deceased Jay Reatard) is also largely guitar driven—but it drags on, as if Boeckner hopes to bludgeon his audience into losing their feelings as well.
I took a train from DC to Philly to see the Furs in April, as they didn’t stop in my hometown. The couple in front of me at the show spent the entire time grinding, so it’s clear that the group is doing something right. But I found myself wishing that Boeckner would unleash his guitar in all that danciness.
