A pioneer of traveling and of low-fi indie rock, Dan Boeckner of Handsome Furs has been bringing innovative music to rabid audiences for years. After his bout in Atlas Strategic, he moved on to Wolf Parade and, in 2005, aligned himself to yet another band—Handsome Furs. The tight two-person unit is shared with wife Alexei Perry, and the couple tends to write otherworldly songs of travel and experience. Boeckner spoke with us about recent album Face Control and plans for the future.
Face Control focuses on Russia and its history. Out of all places to base your album on, why did you choose Russia, and what did you find most fascinating about it?
I don’t know, I mean I guess it was because a lot of those post-Soviet countries are a lot more European, but Russia isn’t. It’s still the East, and the pace of life in Moscow is so different.
How did traveling in Eastern Europe affect the sound of your new album?
It was really a combination of things. When we travel we always try and talk to local promoters about getting new and classic music, and when we were there we heard a lot of low-fi sounds in bars and clubs. I love that stuff man, Russian disco—we heard a lot of cheap techno mixed with old music, like Romanian welded gypsy music. Also, the post-punk movement was really huge there; it was the soundtrack to Communism. I was always a huge fan of Western post-punk music.
What is the best and worst part of being in a two-person band?
The best thing is easy: easy decision making—I guess it helps that we’re married. We never have to argue about where we want to go to dinner. That sounds really mundane, but it’s kind of nice to be able to say like, we’re eating sushi for dinner tonight. I don’t know what the worst thing is; I don’t have a worst thing about being in a two-person band. At first I felt like some of the stages were really big, so we kind of huddled together when we started, and now I like that closeness between me and Lex, when we’re together on the stage.
On your website, you guys say that the band is based completely on traveling, “to absorb the world, life and experience.” You say that the commercial potential you have is used to travel. Would you say that you make music to travel, or travel to make music?
If I couldn’t travel, I’d still be making music. Lex and me never had the money to take a year off to cruise Europe before university. Never had any money, so being able to do something like a Europe trip, like Bucharest, and play a show and have it be super fun and then get to meet people and talk to them, that’s probably the best thing.
Do you plan on keeping your style this way, or do you see yourselves adding more instruments or another band member?
We added other instruments before, but not other people. I just want to keep it down to two people.
What do you like about Handsome Furs that you can’t enjoy in Wolf Parade?
More bass; low frequency bass. But I get some things out of both bands. One of the things I like about Handsome Furs is that it’s a smaller unit. I get to connect with the audience on a totally different level, which is pretty sweet.
What goals do you have for your summer tour?
Actually, we’re gonna do the West Coast, East Coast, go to Europe, we have some shows in China, I think we have five, then we go to southeast Asia and then go back to eastern Europe and Beirut.
