Handsome Furs, Plague Park

At times, Plague Park, the debut album by Handsome Furs, sounds almost untouched by human hands. That seems a strange thing to me, as I find a close affinity between this album and Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, which I consider to be one of the most nakedly “human” albums ever recorded. Aside from the issue of humanity, there are plenty of similarities between the two. Both records are sparse, ominous, and claustrophobic. Both deal heavily with the issues of place, history, personal identity, interpersonal identity, and the breakdown of all of these. The difference is that, where Springteen’s guitar, harmonica, and soul-baring howls evoke the spirit of humanity at its most fragile and honest, Dan Boeckner’s cold, disaffected vocal delivery, static-electricity synths and fractured guitars, along with Alexei Perry’s metronomic drum machine beats, seem more like the last ditch effort of MIT scientists to create an artificial intelligence with human emotion. Think of the Handsome Furs as the house band in a Philip K. Dick novel.

“What We Had” starts the album off with a shiver. “It’s cold flame and diamonds / Nobody here, just empty space.” This song should be a lament, with its incredibly bleak depiction of a relationship that is far worse than over, even while it might still exist as some trimmings-and-trappings imitation of itself. Dan Boeckner’s delivery, however, can’t summon enough sentiment for much more than a declarative voice when he announces, “And what we had / Don’t mean anything / And what we had / Is already gone.” Instead of tugging on heartstrings, Boeckner seems to be pulling his own puppet strings, a 21st Century Pinocchio longing to be a real boy. All this floats just above the surface of repetitive, crashing guitars and weaving synths, punctuated by hollow percussive intrusions. The whole song sounds as if it was recorded in a vacuum, with no intrusion of light or sound, and no possibility for these sounds to escape their own confinement; a fitting sonic accompaniment to such resigned, claustrophobic lyrics.

The lead guitar that provides the melodic thrust on “Hearts of Iron” sounds like a robotic Neil Young, circa Ragged Glory, whose jammed servos have him stuck on repeat. Lyrically, Boeckner and Perry draw from the Finnish creation myth of Ilmatar, Goddess of the Air. Implying a deep mistrust of man, his origins, and his destiny, the dream-sequence song follows the life cycle of the world, from mythical accident to mechanical inevitability; iron-egg infancy to iron-heart obsolescence.

“Cannot Get Started” actually gets started quite nicely, featuring an almost groovy beat and nicely timed keyboard hits. As with most of these tracks, the music itself functions mostly as a sonic whitewash for Boeckner’s voice. Turning things around a little, the last minute of the song allows the music to break free a little bit, bringing in a nice guitar figure that plays well off the basic drum pattern and keyboard filigree. Even Boeckner’s vocals find a more assertive position, bringing in more depth of emotion and character than found elsewhere on the album.

“Dead and Rural,” the album’s dance track, features New Wave-inspired keyboards and an almost upbeat pop feel, an idiosyncrasy considering the title. Then again, that sort of juxtaposition makes sense on an album which, lyrically at least, plays opposing concepts against each other at every turn. Somehow, the whole thing comes together to sound like it would be more at home on a mid-’50s pop record, like something by Buddy Holly or the Everly Brothers, than on a 21st century electro-pop workout.

Album capper “The Radio’s Hot Sun” is probably the most sparse of all, mostly featuring acoustic guitar and tambourine as accompaniment to Boeckner’s vocals. The album opens with a bit of a bang, and ends here with a definite whisper, winding down like a mechanical toy whose springs have expended all of their potential energy.