Handsome Furs

Can you apply the term ‘wardrobe malfunction’ to a touring indie rock band? Can the term ‘indie rock band’ be applied to Little Scream? Can I give Little Scream a break ‘cause her drummer was wearing a Darkthrone T-shirt? I’m probably going to answer none of these questions.

In a quite empty Deaf Institute on a stage in an impossibly short skirt, Little Scream and her band  judder messily between quiet, considered songs and reverb-heavy indie pop. Two guitarists and a drummer makes for a relatively interesting dynamic, and a mildly more pretentious writer might go as far as calling it ‘minimalist indie pop’. Nah – there’s just something missing. There’s so much treble echoing around the room it’s hard to actually pick out a melody and Little Scream’s vocals are often lost in the mix. In quieter moments you can hear a delicate voice singing solid songs, but the overall feeling is one of trying to recreate the songs as they appear on record and falling at the first hurdle.

The Deaf Institute is a little fuller now, but not much. There’s a curious thing at empty gigs, people seem more inclined to gravitate toward the stage – it must be attendees guilt. There are probably research papers dedicated to such phenomena.

“This is cool.. intimate. Like a house party, ‘cept the police won’t show up and find my ketamine stash.” announces Dan Boeckner of Handsome Furs as he and wife Alexei Perry walk onstage looking like a couple straight out of 1984 (not the Orwellian vision of 1984, mind you) and open with the first two tracks from their latest album “Sound Kapital”.

It’s a trashy-looking boy/girl duo with some digital synths, a guitar and a drum machine. You’ve probably heard it all before but that shouldn’t put you off – the chord progressions are familiar but addictive, sounding in places like a filthy, sleazy David Bowie. Boeckner claims The Fall to be his favourite band, but you won’t find much of that sound on the surface.

He and Alexei dance drunkenly around the stage as if performing some sort of bastardized punk rock ballet, choosing to address the small but enthusiastic crowd directly rather than through a microphone – this was a house party and they’d invited us all to join them.

I mentioned attendees guilt before, I think that applies more when the band are obviously disappointed to be playing to a smaller crowd. Nobody really comes away from the show feeling good about it, the crowd just feels like they’ve done the band a thankless favour by showing up. This can be completely avoided by taking a leaf out of Handsome Furs’ book – two people loving what they do so genuinely that anybody who so happens to be in the room can’t help but enjoy themselves too.

For more Handsome Furs, check this out!