Download: Wolf Parade “Ghost Pressure”

(off Expo 86 out June 29th on Sub Pop)

—Chesney Higgins

Download: Sunset Rubdown “Idiot Heart”

(from Dragonslayer out Tue., June 23, on Jagjaguwar)

Sunset Rubdown began as a solo project for Wolf Parade‘s Spencer Krug but quickly evolved into a full band . The music veers from carnival-esque grandeur to pin-drop-quiet beauty, centered around Krug’s recurring lyrical themes of myth, legend and fantasy. They are currently touring in support of their newest album, Dragonslayer. Tom Child interviews multi-instrumentalist Michael Doerksen.

When you go into the studio to record with Spencer, are the songs pretty fully worked out at that point? Do you all have a pretty good idea of how it’s going to sound or do you improvise in the studio at all?
Michael Doerksen (guitar/drums): Well, with Dragonslayer, we knew most of the songs. We were playing them live. That was the idea for this record. We’ve worked other ways before and on Dragonslayer there are a few songs that were put together in the studio. The ones we were playing live, they weren’t working without us toying with them a little bit. So it really depends on what we plan to do. We’ve done a little bit of everything. I don’t think we cut anything. There are certain songs we do live that are different from the recording, like “For the Pier” or “Three Colours.” But no, we didn’t cut anything from this. We basically went in with what we had.
How much of a collaboration is it when you all work together? Does Spencer provide a basic framework and you all bring in your own ideas to structure around that?
Yeah, he has the basic framework in mind and we throw ideas on top of that and explore different avenues of where we can take the song. Everyone is working at their limits, musically. Everyone’s really challenged in this band to work and push themselves to grow and to have it be collaborative. I mean, Spencer has a few things in mind like a key melody or a hook, but the rest of it is kind of filled up by the rest of us, and I think what makes it fun for the band is that it’s sometimes hard for the listener to discern how it’s been made. We all switch instruments sometimes so you’re not sure who’s playing what on each song.
How do you view the progression of Sunset Rubdown from album to album? Is Dragonslayer a completely new direction or are you basically building on what has come before?
It’s a little bit of both, in a way. Sometimes I feel like it’s our first record as a band. There was always sort of a discontinuity between how our records sounded and how we sounded as a band, live. We started doing both of those things at the same time. We made a record very early into our playing together. So people come to see us play live and find that it sounds a little bit different from the record because it’s a live band. I think that’s how we all envisioned this project. That’s how bands should work. We’ve gotten closer on this record to presenting what we’re really like as something to come and watch, as a band. Most of the songs are live off the floor, cut a few days after our last show in Chicago. So they’re really fresh and honest and we didn’t really have time to think about the logistics of adding other things. Like on Random Spirit Lover, there are certain songs that we find difficult to play live because we maybe put a little too much into it and we can’t pull it off live. We just can’t get into it because it was cut in the studio. We’re open to all kinds of different ways of working, but this one definitely feels like a more honest representation of how we sound live.
Everyone always talks about how abstract the lyrics are and how hard it is to grasp onto a literal meaning, which is part of what makes the band so fascinating to listen to. But as someone who knows Spencer personally, do you feel like you know what kinds of real-life circumstances his lyrics actually reference, or is it as much a mystery to you as it is for the average listener?
There are certain things in songs where I might know what he’s talking about, or it might reference something that I know, but other times, like you say, he does use a lot of props, with mythology or… That’s one reason why I was really keen to work with him, because his lyrics are so interesting and strong. That’s kind of the best kind of poetry; that kind of work that puts more in your hands to struggle with and wrestle with the meaning, as opposed to it being flat out. But his lyrics are changing too. The lyrics… that’s his domain, for sure.
Spencer has talked about how, despite the fantastic sweep of the lyrics, the band doesn’t care to employ a lot of theatricality onstage. He likes that you all kind of come onstage wearing whatever you’d wear in your daily lives and just play the music. Is that something you enjoy too or is there a part of you that would like to give in to the excesses of bombastic stagecraft?
That’s an interesting question. We had a discussion when we first started the band about that kind of thing. We’d see other bands out there doing very elaborate, uniform kinds of performances, which were cool and some of it has been really interesting, even if it’s just a prop like Deerhoof using that spinning light wheel… the magic rainbow wheel or whatever it is. So there are certain things that are cool about that. We like to put lamps onstage. But as far as dressing up… maybe we’re old fashioned, but that’s not a big concern. The surface level appearance of the band doesn’t really enter into our equation. But there are certain things… like I’ve worn a cape during a show once… for fun. We were in Sweden or something and I just wore a cape onstage. We’re not really strict about it. It could be interesting to wear a certain t-shirt or put a sign up. We’ve toyed with these kinds of ideas, but when it comes down to it, when you’re on the road, you don’t really want to think about that stuff. Just getting through a song is complicated enough and is a challenge, so to think about how you’re coming across on another level visually is a whole other thing. Like Bowie pulled it off brilliantly and he had one of the best guitar players in the world who could don a crazy costume and play to that theatrical model, but we’re not really like that.
What’s it like touring with Sunset Rubdown? 24-hour party or do you keep it pretty serious?
Serious. No, we don’t really fancy ourselves partiers or anything like that. We’re pretty mellow—we like to get a good night’s sleep usually. We have the usual entertainment in the van or we like to sleep during the day. Pretty humdrum, when it comes down to it. Read a book or listen to music or talk. Play a game. No video games though. Actually, we did have a video game in Europe. We had a machine in the van that they rented for us. It was like you were Hercules or someone, fighting Zeus? It was pretty epic.
That seems pretty appropriate.
Actually—you’re right.
If you can think of your favorite Sunset Rubdown show that you’ve played—where was the show and what made it so great for you?
We’ve had some pretty good times in a lot of places, but one time in particular…I think it was our first tour out by ourselves…we had gone out with Frog Eyes and then we were out again just by ourselves which was new to us. It was a memorable tour in that way. But we played in Atlanta at a place called Lenny’s, and the crowd was so incredible. It was a small kind of old man’s bar. They had just got a brand new PA and it sounded amazing and the crowd was incredible. It was the kind of crowd where they’re right in your face and you’re clinking your beers together with them. There’s no stage. It was incredible and we played an incredible show. It was one of our tightest sets. Just because of the energy in that room, I couldn’t forget it.
As a guitar player, who has most influenced your style?
There are a number of players that I’ve been listening to. Neil Young, even John Fahey. Thurston Moore—as a younger guitar player growing up—was a big influence on me. That kind of dirty playing. But I also really like Queen. Brian May’s playing was incredible. Jimmy Page, for how many styles he touched and for how risky his playing was. I think between Jordan and I, we can get a little flashy sometimes. It’s fun. You don’t get a chance to write that kind of solo everyday. And Spencer’s music can really lend itself to complicated playing and really complicated musicianship. It’s a challenge. That’s precisely what I liked about his songwriting. When I saw him play with Wolf Parade when they first started, I thought, ‘I’d really like to play with this guy.’ It’s certainly a challenge. I’d been playing with other bands where the themes were good, the lyrics were strong and the music had a lot of emotion to it, but the music was kind of a Nick Cave orchestra kind of thing. Or I’ve played in completely improvised noise bands. But I came from a blues background—kind of a classic rock background in terms of my guitar playing. So finding someone to write these great pop tunes—it’s definitely fun.
How did you and Spencer meet each other?
Through a friend of a friend; that friend being Arlen from Wolf Parade. I’d been playing in bands with him since I was about 18 in Victoria. We came out here together the same year. We were playing in bands before Wolf Parade formed. I was in a rock band where he was the drummer and Dan and Spencer came to town and formed a band and wanted Arlen. Arlen was quite a sought-after drummer in Victoria. He played in many, many bands, so I didn’t hold it against him. It was a great opportunity. The band I was in folded, but before that we shared the same jam space—this rock band and the newly formed Wolf Parade—and at one point we were switching up and this kind of a jam session—which might arise when musicians get together in the same room and the instruments are on—happened between Spencer and I. We started jamming out on something and he always remembered that. We saw each other around and eventually, when Sunset Rubdown’s first record got some attention and he planned on touring with it, he asked me since we were familiar with each other and he liked my playing. It was kind of a perfect match.
If you had to pick a favorite Sunset Rubdown song, what would it be?
Woah. Um… geez, it’s such a hard question. I’ve never been asked that before. Haven’t even thought about it because they’re all like children. They’ve all got certain characteristics that you enjoy while you’re playing it. And I’ve never gone through a set feeling bored. Some things get me more excited on certain nights, like “The Taming of the Hands.” That’s a really fun one to play. Ferocious. But I like getting on the drum kit and playing “Stadiums and Shrines.” The drums on “The Men Are Called Horsemen…” We haven’t played that in a while. We’ve talked about really redoing it. But yeah, I can’t really… What’s your favorite?
“The Men Are Called Horsemen…” Where do you think you’ll be headed after this, creatively?
Well, I suppose we will put out another record. I don’t know, I can’t say. We definitely haven’t spoken about too much. Actually just today, Spencer told me he wanted to start putting out singles and EPs only strictly. No more records. It seems that putting together an album is quite a task and you can fail and people will still maybe see something that you didn’t see in how it works perfectly as this record in some way that you didn’t even intend or think about. But getting back to the idea of singles and just pumping out songs… it’s an interesting model. I don’t know.
What do you think has inspired him to think about doing that?
I think it’s kind of a practical thing. Like when the song’s finished, you can just get it out there right away instead of having to perform it and sit on it for two years and then put it on a record. Like “Idiot Heart,” for example—we’ve been playing that since we recorded Random Spirit Lover but we decided not to put it on that record. And it’s actually based on one of our very first songs which became “Q-Chord” on the first record. We stripped everything else that we had done on that song and just left Camilla’s playing on the QChord and we came back to it again a year and a half later. So it’s kind of like if a song is ready, you can just get it out. That’s why we recorded that for Daytrotter—just to get it out there so people know it and can enjoy it at the show when they come hear it. It’s nice to be familiar with it.
Wasn’t there a plan to put out a 7″ that had some kind of photography component?
That’s come out already. And I think it came out and sold out. It was a very small pressing…the “Moonface” thing.
So is that the direction you’re heading? That kind of limited-run thing?
I don’t know about limited-run. That was an opportunity that came to us to do that sort of thing. But we’d probably like to see a little more than… what did they print? Like 1500? 500? I forget the number. Or even digitally release things, just pump them out online. We’ve been talking about getting a little more active on the internet on our own terms. None of us are on Facebook or anything. We’re not really that savvy. We don’t have a MySpace for Sunset Rubdown. But we’ve talked about having a little more control over our website, which has been pretty dull. We just post things occasionally. But you know, like Bradford Cox from Deerhunter, he pumps singles out for his Atlas Sound project and that’s a really interesting model. I think it’s really effective and practical for your audience, that kind of interaction. And 7″s and vinyl especially are becoming more and more important, ironically or unexpectedly, and I think that’s going to become a real driving force in the economy of the music industry, as far as making some kind of return for your music. Vinyl is a really good way to go.

SUNSET RUBDOWN WITH ELFIN SADDLE AND WITCHIES ON TUES., JUNE 23, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8 PM / $13-$15 / ALL AGES. ATTHEECHO.COM. SUNSET RUBDOWN’S DRAGONSLAYER RELEASES TUES., JUNE 23, ON JAGJAGUWAR. VISIT SUNSET RUBDOWN AT SUNSETRUBDOWN.NET.

Download: Handsome Furs “Radio Kaliningrad”

(from Face Control out now on Sub Pop)

Handsome Furs are husband-and-wife team Dan Boeckner (also in Wolf Parade) and Alexei Perry and their new album Face Control blends classic rock riffs with a techno beat. They have been to many places you have never heard of. Alexei takes time out from a day at the beach to do this interview. This interview by Tom Child.

Are you in America now?
Alexei Perry (synth/drum machines): We’re in Vancouver now, actually. Basically in the last week we flew from Bucharest to Portugal to Montreal to Chicago to Vancouver. It’s wild, I have no idea what time it is. It’s beach time, actually. That’s what Dan just said. We’re sitting on English Bay right now. We used to live in this area, so we’re having a bit of a beach date. It’s gorgeous. Yeah, it’s beautiful. I have a bikini on. It’s nice.
I don’t think I’ve ever conducted an interview with someone in a bikini before.
I get very little downtime, so I’m eating it up.
What inspired you two to first form Handsome Furs?
I think it happened pretty naturally really. We were both living in a pretty small place and we ended up just sort of working on each other’s stuff. Dan was editing a lot of my stories and we bought a drum machine and started working stuff out together on that. There’s no big story about it, really. We just enjoy working on projects together I think. And also we really wanted to do a lot of traveling together. That was a big reason for starting our band.
How did you first become interested in being a writer?
I’ve been writing since I was a little kid. I think my dad would say that it started when he was telling me stories. He always used to come up with stories when I was falling asleep and I could never fall asleep because I was always fascinated. He would try to throw in new words for me—words that I wouldn’t know. So I would always sort of leap onto each new phrase and ask him all about it. I’ve just always loved words and I’ve always written and it’s always been the most important thing in the world to me.
I read that a poem you had written when you were 13 was submitted by your teacher without your knowledge and was published in Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul…
I hate that people know that story! How embarrassing.
I was just wondering if you’d received any residuals.
Yeah, that was actually kind of a weird story for me. I was, I think, 12 or something when I wrote that and the teacher submitted it. The poem actually got completely lopped in half and I was really unhappy about it. But to my 12-year-old bank account, $300 was pretty awesome. And I continue, to this day, to get a lot of fan mail from prisons around the world. So that’s something.
I did a search for your name on Amazon.com and the three books that came up were…one of them was Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, and the other two that popped up were Thomas Canby’s From Botswana to the Bering Sea—My Thirty Years with National Geographic and Mike Toth’s Fashion Icon: The Power and Influence of Graphic Design. Do you find any cosmic significance in this?
That’s perfect! That’s great. That’s all the things I love. Messed up teenagers, fashion and travel. I’ve been published in a lot of compilations and I hand bind things and sell things at little stores and galleries. I have a collection that I want to work on getting published. I just haven’t totally had the time to make it happen yet, but I’m working on it.
And you sell your books at the merch table on tour.
Yeah, those are some of the funner, lighter kind of things. It’s a good way to get words out there. I’m not one for having things online. I’m kind of a neo-Luddite. Me having this cell phone, actually…I just got it three days ago and I still don’t really know how to do anything on it and it’s the first cell phone I’ve ever had. I still write on a crappy old Underwood typewriter, so I’m getting used to the real world.
The music of Handsome Furs seems to express some sort of anxiety about our increasing reliance on social interaction through computers or digital technology. What aspect of this trend is most troubling to you?
Well, to be totally honest, there are good and bad things about it. For us, because we’re trying to play in a lot of different places, the one lovely thing about our music being available everywhere by the Internet is that people like in Belgrade have access to it, where we otherwise don’t have distribution. People can listen to our music and find out about us that way, which I think is great. It can all be used for really great things. But there’s a lot I find troubling about it. I think people don’t have the same experience that I did listening to music growing up, and waiting for release dates and going down to the local record store and actually getting this thing in your hand and enjoying it the whole way through. So I think that’s a sadness. And I think there’s just so much that’s available that people don’t take the time to get really devoted to bands anymore, which is unfortunate. And it’s not the way that I experience things. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s just as good, but for me it’s a totally foreign way of listening to music or appreciating anything really. It’s the same reason why I don’t want to make my writing available online because I don’t want it to be read that way. I want people to sit down with it and actually take time with it. I think that’s been lost and that’s terrible.
It’s really hard for me to get into reading anything of any length or impact online.
I know—I have no patience for it. I can’t personally do it. And I find you can tell. Maybe I’m hypersensitive to this kind of stuff, but I can really tell the difference between blog writing and story writing—like when you’re writing in a journal or whatever, is so totally different. There’s not a whole lot of craft. There’s a lot that gets lost when you live exclusively in your computer, I think. I’m fortunately not one of those folks, so I get to appreciate things in really great ways.
Would you say that you and Dan have an equal level of distrust of these sorts of technologies?
I think so. Like I said, I think we both see the stuff that’s good about it and the stuff that sucks about it. I think Dan feels the same I do. He’s sitting beside me. I can ask him. How do you feel about technology, baby? He’s shaking his head. He’s reading the paper. That’s how he feels about it. We’re sitting on the beach reading books and the newspaper, so…
When you two are writing songs together, how does the process work?
It’s different for every song actually. We both work on different parts separately and then flesh them out together. We’ll come up with riffs or drum machine patterns and then bring things into the studio and try to make sense of it all. But I think we both do a pretty equal amount of all parts of it. We both do lyric writing and drum machine programming. I don’t do any guitar, but I’ll have ideas about it. It’s a pretty natural thing and we’re pretty fortunate because we live together and work together and travel together so whenever we have ideas we get to get them out pretty quickly, just because we’re together. So that part is really nice.
When you got your drum machine and synthesizer, did you have a specific sound you knew you wanted? Or did you buy the equipment first and then figure out what sounds you liked?
It was a combination of the things that I ended up getting being cheap because I was totally broke, and you know, I had a lot of friends recommending different things to me that were a lot fancier and a lot cooler. I’m not terribly hip, you know, so for me I just wanted the drum machine to be really tactile and something I could play live. I have no interest in using computer programs and stuff to do that, because I know you can just press play and play along with that, but for me, it’s a lot more interesting to be able to trigger things live. I guess those were sort of my reasons for getting the things that I got.
You and Dan met at a telemarketing job. Do you have any telemarketing horror stories you care to share?
It was a nightmare the whole way through. The place were we worked, we were selling basically bogus business directories to old ladies taking care of crumbling businesses, especially in the southwest of America.
Any terrible stories?
Well, you know, like cokehead bosses, stuff like that. But we made it through pretty unscathed just because we were in it together. We tried to spend as many hours as we possibly could making out in the elevator rather than being on the phone. But we got fired for that kind of behavior.
A lot of bands absolutely hate touring. How do you think you and Dan are different, personality-wise, from other bands where that’s their least favorite part of the business?
I understand why a lot of bands hate touring. It’s a grueling lifestyle. And I think the more people you have involved in any project you do, the more difficult it can be. I know that for Dan and I touring is relatively painless because it’s just the two of us trying to figure out where to have dinner or what museum to try to check out before sound check. So the same challenges that exist in other bands, we don’t face. We’re also such a compact band. We have such little gear that we can travel in a car or trains or planes much more easily than other bands. We don’t have those same sorts of hardships. And a lot of other people don’t like being away from home as much as Dan and I do. I could be on the road forever. I feel so fucking lucky to be able to go to the places that we get to go. I never, ever though that that would happen for me. And traveling has always been such a huge deal to me and what I wanted to do most in my life, so I can’t take that for granted. Whereas a lot of other people, they want to spend more time at home, working on other things, which I totally understand. But Dan and I both come from kind of meager backgrounds, not having a lot of money, and we both like to work really hard at what we do. I just feel tremendously lucky to meet the people that we do in the places that we get to go to. It’s the best job in the world.
What’s your favorite place you’ve been?
There are a lot. I’ll just go with the most recent one that was really touching for me. We just spent a week in Bucharest and I have never felt more alive in any city. I think there is so much going on there that is incredible. It’s a very unusual city. It’s got 300,000 stray dogs and a lot of people living with very little. It’s the most densely packed city in Europe and it just feels like people have so much will to do so much, no matter what they have and I find that just incredibly inspiring. We met so many writers and artists and musicians while we were there that were just doing really incredible things. It was eye-opening and I loved every minute of being there. And it was also hot and filthy and the architecture is both beautiful and horrible. It’s just got an incredible and exciting nature that I can’t wait to go back to. I’ll go back there as soon as I can because I think that there’s so much good that’s going on. But there’s a multitude of cities that I hold dear to my heart. We’ve had incredible times in Helsinki and Moscow and New York and I like L.A. and I don’t know—there are a lot of places I really really love and a lot of places that I never would have known I would have loved, you know? We played in Klaipeda and it was a really, really cool place, so…who knew? It’s a really small little city on a port right near Kaliningrad and I never would have heard of it unless we were playing there. We’re trying to get to China and Singapore. We haven’t played anywhere in Asia and I’m tremendously excited about doing that. We’re trying to figure out playing in Beirut and Istanbul. The truth is I want to play everywhere we possibly can. I want to go everywhere, so name it, and that’s a place I’d like to play.
What is the most unlikely place you’ve found yourself playing?
Probably Klaipeda. It was totally bizzaro. It was a very, very strange place and the venue we played was really weird. It felt like we were in Russia, but in small town, middle-of-nowhere Russia. There was a lot of money at the club and a lot of security and face control and all that jazz. It just felt totally foreign, like I’d never been to any place like that. There were all these sunken submarines that you could still see in the harbor and that was really cool. That place was a real surprise and I loved it.
Have you or Dan ever found yourselves victims of a particularly harsh face control policy, either literally or metaphorically?
Coming into your fair country, yeah. We did actually face face control while we were in Russia, but on a pretty light scale. We tried to go for lunch, totally midday, at a buffet place and there was a guy who face controlled us and we were fortunate enough to be with this girl named Anja who was working with the promoter and she luckily talked our way into the place. As far as other kinds of face control, yeah, the harshest I’ve probably faced was trying to come to the U.S. without proper visas and getting denied. Yeah, that was a pretty shitty experience. Those wounds have healed and everything, but that was a pretty lousy day. It was really, really hard on me. I mean, for about nine hours, I basically thought I was going to jail for ten years. Yeah, I did a lot of crying that day.
On behalf of my country, I apologize.
Oh, it’s not your fault. I think we’re not much better up in Canada. It is what it is. Those borders are tricky. I wish things would get a little easier, especially for musicians. The laws should be a little different. It’s not like we’re coming down to steal your jobs. We’re just coming down for a few days to play shows that generate you more money.
You and Dan had composed a list of tips for successful touring as a couple for Anthem. Are there any updates to that since you wrote that?
The truth is, for that thing, we wrote about nine pages and told them to choose whatever you want, so if you want me to send you the list, I have a much more complete list. It was really long and they had to edit it. Yeah, we’ve got lots of advice.
Maybe this is too personal a question, but has it always been smooth touring with Dan?
Yeah, it has been. We travel really easily together, and we both like what we do so much that we don’t really hit too many snags along the way. Our only grievances are not getting enough alone time or quiet time to ourselves. You’re always doing something while you’re on tour, whether it’s sound checking or whatever, there are always a lot of things you have to be on top of. And we manage the band ourselves, so the business-y stuff we have to do on the road…yeah, there’s very little that we’ve had that has been hard. I think we’re pretty lucky. A lot of bands face problems that we don’t have. It’s pretty easy.
You’ve said you can’t be afraid to get injured while you’re onstage. I was wondering what the worst injury you’ve sustained in service to Handsome Furs has been?
Well, I’ll tell the most recent one just because it’s funny. It’s not actually my injury, it’s Dan’s. We were playing in Belgrade in Serbia and Dan got yanked off the stage by an awesome amount of moshing fans, which was so great. It was so awesome, but he got pulled offstage and he sort of hit his forehead on the monitor as he came down and didn’t realize that he got a pretty significant gash on his forehead. So he got back up and started singing and he was just completely covered in blood to the point where all the guys and girls who had pulled him offstage basically ran from him in horror. ‘Holy shit, he’s covered in blood!’ So that one was pretty good and he gets to say that he bled in Serbia now.
You’ve said that your experiences in Eastern Europe and the Balkans shaped the themes or sounds of Face Control—what kind of music were you listening to you while you were there?
They listen to a lot of shitty techno, but it’s kind of awesome because it’s a lot of stuff from the ‘90s that’s really nostalgic for them. So you go into these clubs and to my ears, it sounds like garbage, but these songs have actually changed people’s lives. So we listened to a lot of that. I think that was influential sonically. We just wanted to create something that was really immediate because what we were finding with the people we were meeting was that people would joke a lot about life being shitty and the only relief from it was being able to dance it away or listen to music, so I wanted to, in some way, give that back. So I wanted to make something that was more danceable and beat driven and heavier. I feel a lot of kinship with that. Life is not always what you want it to be and sometimes the only thing you can do is make yourself feel good. And dancing is nice, it helps.
Is that a particularly uniquely Eastern European attitude? ‘Life sucks, let’s dance?’
Well, it feels that way sometimes. Maybe it’s just the people we’ve met. I know that when I go to shows in North America, it can be quite different. People aren’t necessarily there for the same reasons, just to feel joy. Sometimes folks are there for a lot of other reasons, whether it’s to be cool or whatever. At least with the shows we’ve played, I feel that people in Eastern Europe were there for the right reason, and that’s just to try to find joy. I know that sounds really cheesy, but there’s something great about that.
On your bio on the Sub Pop site, it says that you are simultaneously a political band and not a political band. What’s your interpretation of that?
It was an Icelandic journalist who wrote that, and I think that’s a pretty apt description of us. I think we want to comment on the world we’re having to deal with but I don’t have any political agenda and I don’t have any good answers. So as much as I want to talk about the things that I find unjust or dissatisfying, I don’t have any of the answers. I just want to be able to comment on them.
Did you stay at the Hotel Arbat and if so, how did you find the accomodations?
The Hotel Arbat is hilarious. It’s actually owned by Putin and it’s right on the pedestrian street called Arbat. The facade of the building and the lobby is totally grandiose. There are chandeliers and everything’s marble and plush velvet curtains. Then you go into your room and it’s sort of shabby. It’s got industrial soap and the perks that you’re expecting to find aren’t there. So it’s an awesome juxtaposition of being very showy and yet it’s probably the same soap they had during Soviet times. You’re using it to shower off under terrible water pressure. When we were walking down Arbat, I saw an enormous amount of wealth…wealth that I’d never really seen on those kinds of levels. Really crazy, crazy money. And on that street, there are women who have made their homes in port-a-potties. So that was a pretty wild thing to witness. But I mean, I love it, I don’t mean that as a negative and you see that sort of divide between rich and poor everywhere, but it was such an extreme level I found it pretty mind blowing. And I also thought it was really cool that the dogs can navigate the subway systems.
They actually get on the trains and get off at their stop?
Yeah. It was amazing. We entered the subway and the cars are pretty old. A lot of them are still these wood lined cars. We saw these packs of dogs that get on and off at the right stops. They really know where they’re going. It was hilarious. And it’s funny because I think there’s something valued by the people of Moscow. People love that there. In one of the main stations we were in, there were all these statues of dogs that you rub for good luck.
I was reading in another interview that Dan said ‘Handsome Furs Hate This City’ was at least a tiny bit inspired by L.A. What happened to you here and is there anything I can say to help change your mind?
We don’t hate L.A.—we don’t hate L.A. But we did write that song in L.A. That’s the only reason. That song isn’t about any particular city, to be honest. We did a number of shows opening for Modest Mouse when we were just getting started and we wrote that in the dressing room before going onstage in front of a couple thousand people and it was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. I’m not used to performing in general. I mean, I am now, but when we started I was. I’m a very solitary girl and so it was a strange thing for me, an incredible challenge. That’s the only reason that song has anything to do with L.A. I like L.A. There are things, of course, I hate about it, but we’ve always had really awesome times there.
Is there a city that just really seems to get Handsome Furs?
There are two. I think that’s a hard question to answer because every night is different and every time we play in those cities is different, but the two places I’ve played where I felt most conceptually understood or whatever have been Belgrade and Helsinki. The crowds have been really really really good there. I don’t know why, they just somehow get it on a gut level.
If you could open for any band in history, who do you think would be best matched with Handsome Furs?
I don’t know. That’s tricky. There are a lot of bands I like, but then a lot of bands I just think would be cool to open for. I’d like to open for Tina Turner. I don’t know, that’s too hard for me.
That would be a good match. I wouldn’t necessarily have thought of that.
I’ll stick with that then.
You and Dan both seem to be very open and honest about all sorts of things in your life, from drug use to your relationship. Have you ever experienced any fallout from being that honest in interviews?
Well, yeah—we try to be as frank and open as possible because that’s what we’re trying to do with our music anyway, to be honest about everything we’re doing. My mom hates that I smoke in press photos. There have been some things that people have said negative things about, but I don’t really care. There have been a lot of things said that were untrue, but I think for the most part, we can back up whatever we’ve said in interviews. Anything that’s been said negatively, I don’t really care because that’s who I am.
Not to take up anymore of your beach time, but what is the viscous zombie fluid from the ‘I’m Confused’ video composed of?
I don’t even know exactly what it was, to be honest. I think it was toothpaste and cake mix and baking powder. It was disgusting. And actually at the end, when Dan spits it in my mouth, he was supposed to wait for his cue, but it was so gross for him that he ended up spitting early, so when I’m choking in the video, that was real. It was like, ‘Woah, my God, I wasn’t prepared for that.’ And it totally stained our teeth and skin for the next couple weeks, so we just looked like hell.

THE HANDSOME FURS WITH THE CINNAMON BAND AND THE MONOLATORS ON THUR., JUNE 11, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $13-$15 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. THE HANDSOME FURS’ FACE CONTROL IS OUT NOW ON SUB POP. VISIT THE HANDSOME FURS AT MYSPACE.COM/HANDSOMEFURS.

Most folks come to Destroyer in a roundabout way—they follow the song-length breadcrumbs Bejar’s left on stellar albums by the New Pornographers, or they hear his unmistakable contributions to Canadian supergroup Swan Lake, or they stumble backwards through other bands’ admitted influences until they come to Destroyer’s catalog. It’s sizeable. Since 1996′s debut We’ll Build Them a Golden Bridge, Bejar’s averaged one Destroyer album per year, which means that his body of work is as sprawling and self-reflexive as his best lyrics. Said work has a following that’s a few degrees past cultishly devoted, as evidenced by a vast, independent Wiki dedicated to annotating the band’s songs. It was clear that the turnout tonight included fans from across the spectrum—no two people I asked had the same favorite album. There was no single song that everyone recognized, but every offering, including “Downtown,” a new song from a forthcoming album, was met with sharp intakes of breath and whispered (or slurred, barky) exclamations.

Standouts included recent selections as well as the plaintive “Goddess of Draught” from 2002′s This Night, and “No Cease Fires! (Crimes Against the State of Our Love, Baby)” from 1998′s City of Daughters, though the entire set was executed with passion and a generous amount of precision. Also, a weirdly genial sense of humor—in lieu of muttered banter, there were self-effacing laughs and ceremonious bowing. A request during the encore ["Self Portrait With Thing (Tonight Is Not Your Night)"] was played in an altered time-signature to accommodate the lack of a band. The evening’s most gasp-inducing moment came in the form of what Bejar called a “cover,” though it was one of his own songs from Swan Lake’s 2006 album Beast Moans. The original recording of “The Freedom” features the echoey yelps of Bejar’s fellow band members—Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes and Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade/Sunset Rubdown—resounding as Bejar belts out an epic ode to miscommunication. Tonight’s version lacked the aural addendums of the supergroup, but maintained Bejar’s signature sound, which over the course of the night managed to fill a comically dark room with its good-natured ferocity.

—Amalia Levari

Let me tell you where it ends. First: losing your virginity to “I’ll Believe Anything.” Not literally, but in the mind, where reality is a musical. Wolf Parade performed the tune as an encore. You may recall a lovely video involving duels and cannons punctuating the chorally vocal nature of a well-produced track. Live, Spencer Krug’s voice penetrates the song. It gets personal. Sally* turns 18. Sally’s in the woods. She just left a boy with amazing hair by a secluded log. She returns to her friends roasting marshmallows and frankfurters together into what they’ve dubbed “hot dog smores.” She jabs some marshmallows on a stick, stares at the fire, noticing she will never look at a tree the same way, envisioning how a few moments ago she flipped over backwards off a fallen log, enraptured by a warm, twinkling sensation. One pal says, “Dude, your marshmallows are done.” They’ve gone from charred to puddy, dripping off her stick into yellow flames. “Why are you smiling?” Another friend reaches over and pulls leaves out of Sally’s hair. Her cheeks glow pink, a mirror for the fire’s reflection. This giddiness steamed off everyone’s heads leaving the Wolf Parade concert. Of note, each band member has a lovely idiosyncrasy. Arlen Thompson closes his eyes, Dan Boeckner’s head does a bird of paradise-like propulsive bobbing, Dante DeCaro swings his bass around like a merry-go-round, Spencer and Hadji Bakara both thrust and pulse their upper halves precariously close to smacking their faces on their instruments. Hadji might actually be playing his effects pedals with his forehead. All the boys clang away on their toys and it’s almost impossible to figure out how such crisp sounds emerge out of wild bashing. Harmonics are hard! Like a log…

* We are all Sally. This is absolutely not a true story.

– Daiana Feuer

Wolf Parade “Language City”

Wolf Parade have just released their newest album and are able to spontaneously assess and answer difficult questions about unorthodox transanthropomorphification of various band members. They speak now to Daiana Feuer.

Your new album, At Mount Zoomer, came out a few weeks ago. How are you feeling about it? Like your baby just started walking, or like you’re watching a balloon drift off into space, or like the morning after intense lovemaking, and you’re having breakfast, kind of drunk and shaky?
Arlen Thompson (drums): I’d say ‘B.’ I feel like when you finish making a record, it kind of leaves your hands. It really becomes its own thing. You lose vision of it in a lot of ways, like watching a balloon. You kind of let it go and see where it ends up.
And hope it doesn’t choke a turtle, right?
Yeah, ultimately you want it to be good, a balloon that does good.
Were you bummed that the album leaked a couple months ago? How did it happen?
It’s kind of impossible for it not to these days. Yeah, I was a little bit bummed but what can you do? I think it leaked through a journalist.
Speaking of journalists, how do you feel about being compared all the time? Does it stick you somewhere?
It kind of seems to me a lazy way to describe a band by saying they sound like this and this. We get thrown in a lot with Modest Mouse and Arcade Fire but I don’t really think we sound like either band. I guess we sound more like Modest Mouse than we do like Nickelback.
OK, if each person in your band were a sound effect, what would they be?
Oh man. Dan would be a smoker’s cough. Hadji would be a Fleetwood Mac record. Spencer would be…? Dante would be the sound of a cat sleeping. What would Spencer be…? Spencer would be the sound of a bottle being dropped. I would be…the sound of a banana being peeled.
Those are all interesting sounds to come together. And it’s true, everyone seems to be doing different things, but when it comes together in the same room, all these different elements will help you evolve forever.
Oh totally. I think that’s kind of what’s happening. And we’ll keep doing it for as long as we’re interested in making music together. I don’t think we’re going to be the Rolling Stones or Aerosmith or something.
In terms of cranking it out in a wheelchair?
I think everyone will still be making music until they’re, you know, cranking it out in wheelchairs, but we’ll keep going as a group until it doesn’t seem fun anymore.
Are you excited to finally tour again?
Yeah, we’ve started rehearsing again. It’s pretty fun. Just getting to play music together. We haven’t done that in quite a while. Besides recording, which isn’t really actually playing together because it’s done in separate parts. But getting to play some old songs was nice. It’d been a long time. We did the last tour last summer, ended in September and after that we really just focused on the record, just did mixing and overdubs. I don’t think we’ve played as a band since.
How does a band practice session take shape?
Someone’s always late. Usually we have a couple of running jokes that we kind of work on during the session. I can’t even get into that. It’s really long-winded, complicated inside jokes I doubt anyone would find funny. It would take a while and you would wonder what the hell we were talking about. Eventually we get down to business. And during breaks Dante and Hadji are fucking around with their instruments. Our room has no ventilation so it gets extremely hot and stuffy and we sweat a lot.
Got anything special planned for the tour?
Nothing really special. We’re dusting off some old songs. No great surprises. It’s still going to be just us playing music. We’re not really a band that’s every going to get like Iron Maiden where we’re going to have a 20-foot-tall Yeti running across the stage.
There’s a certain declamation of punk spirit in your band’s ways, how does that go into performing and how you create your music?
I think Dan said something about it once. Generally, the way we like to perform, I guess. Obviously it sounds pretty ridiculous because of the size of the venues we’re playing now, but we try to play as if we’re playing in someone’s basement. We really try to let it all hang out rather than put on any staged performance. For music, we really just keep ourselves honest and play music that we find interesting. Not get caught up in being some sort of act.
How long did the production stuff take? The actual putting together of the album, jamming out sessions, picking it apart for the goods and then laying it down?
We were all kind of working on it. We took these rough ideas that we had sketched out, came together and started piecing it. Dan or Spencer weaved things together. For me, I was acting as an agent just to try to record it all and keep things somewhat organized in that respect. It was a pretty interesting process to do a record like this.
That recording part is pretty important. The sound quality, the tone, that’s like an additional instrument.
Totally. We wanted to keep it simple, a pretty live feel to things. I tried to record the songs when they were still pretty fresh. Just tried to keep things sounding pretty open and natural. Not make things sound overproduced, like a lot of modern rock records sound. Not too mechanical. Trying to make it sound loose and organic. It’s just got to have some life to it. What we did was built out of spontaneity.
Your album’s named after your studio, Mount Zoomer? What’s it look like?
As studios go, it’s pretty unimpressive. It’s a couple of rooms in a loft in Montreal. It’s got a light grey color to it. It’s not very big. It’s got some recording equipment and some music-making equipment. Maybe 20 feet by 15 feet. It’s really a workspace. Wolf Parade uses it, and Handsome Furs, Megazoid uses it, one of Hadji’s side projects.
Are there snacks?
There’s usually beer. That’s pretty common. Or a bottle of booze of some sort. It’s pretty bare when it comes to any sort of homemaking. There aren’t very many homemaking touches. I do have one poster I want to put up.
‘Mount Zoomer,’ a euphemism for shrooms?
Zoomers is B.C. slang for magic mushrooms. It’s also an anagram name for Matt Moroz, whose done videos for us (‘I’ll Believe in Anything’ and ‘Shine A Light’) and did the album artwork with Elizabeth Huey, both good friends of ours. Matt also did the Apologies artwork. I like getting your friends to make art for you. It’s kind of nice.
Is there a song on Zoomers you especially like to play?
I like ‘Kissing a Beehive.’ It’s got a lot of neat parts to it. I like ‘Call It a Ritual,’ even though I have a really repetitive part. It’s a fun song.
How many bands have you been in?
Dozens!
How old were you when you entered your first band?
Probably 13.
What kind of hairdo did you have?
Shitty teenage long hair. I was well into grunge in those days.
What drummers did you like?
I was a big fan of your classics. John Bonham and Ginger Baker and I liked the guy who drummed in Helmet and I guess drums in Battles now, John Steiner. Probably Dave Grohl.
What’s your favorite country that you’ve been to?
I like Germany a lot. That was pretty fun. I like Berlin. The kind of attitude there. I like Hungary a lot too. I spent a couple of weeks in Budapest. I like the Hungarians.
Are you the one that found a skull in the garbage there?
No, that was my friend Quinn. That was pretty weird. I liked Budapest a lot actually. It’s a lot like Berlin. Compared to North America, it’s pretty loose. It’s pretty easy livin’. There’s a lot of interesting history.
What country has the weirdest toilet?
Hungary. They’re different. I don’t know if it’s still kind of like a Soviet era system going on. But they were kind of backwards, if you can imagine that. It was kind of the opposite of what an American toilet looks like.
What kind of imaginary place could this record play at?
This record goes all over the place so it’s hard to think of just one. Have you heard of tales of the world inside the earth? The secret worlds, the lost people. There’s supposed to be an earth inside the earth. And a whole other civilization that exists inside the earth. That’s probably what this record is like.
If this album were an animal, what would it be?
Oh! We actually have a painting of us as animal figures with each band member in his animal body, like his totem animal. I am a bear. Dan is a snake. Spencer is a goat. No, Hadji is a goat. Or Dante is a cat. I got to look this up real quick…I’m a Bear. Dan’s a snake. Spencer’s a duck. Hadji’s a goat and Dante’s a rabbit. The artist, Spencer’s sister, picked them for us.
Who would be your ideal tourmates?
Getting to tour with people you like. We tend to bring friends of ours on tour. It makes touring more fun. Once you’re on the road, you don’t have day-to-day responsibilities. You don‘t have to think about what you’re doing that day. It’s pretty summer camp-ish in a way. I’ve never been to summer camp so I don’t really know but I bet it is…
What three foods would you take on an endless tour?
I would take dumplings and Szechuan beef, that’s one. Two, I would take Lebanese shwarma. And three, I would take probably a Mission-style burrito. You can’t get any good burritos in Montreal. It’s really disappointing.
What is your cure for a hangover?
Eating greasy food. Water, greasy food.
What are your plans for today?
I’ll be hanging out then I’ve got a rehearsal with another band. That’s about it. Taking it easy. It’s this band called Transylvania. A bunch of friends that are musicians and a bunch that are not musicians that basically make…noise.
What do you like about making noise?
I like the chance aspect of it. That something good might come out of total mayhem.

WOLF PARADE’S AT MOUNT ZOOMER IS OUT NOW ON SUB POP. VISIT WOLF PARADE AT MYSPACE.COM/WOLFPARADE.

White Fang / White Rainbow @ Echo Curio
Wolf Parade @ The Henry Fonda
Treasure Mammal + More @ The Smell
Todd Congelliere @ Pehr Space
Earlimart @ Spaceland
Urban Underground Awards w/Evidence @ The Airliner
Darker My Love / Crystal Antlers @ The Echoplex
Controllers / Dogs @ Relax Bar
Telomere Repair @ Alex’s Bar

Handsome Furs “Sing! Captain”

The name “Bruce Springsteen” gets tossed around as a musical influence a lot these days. With growing numbers of North Americans beginning to consider themselves “working class,” it makes sense that the man’s ouevre is due for a reappreciation. While big name acts like the Killers have embraced every aspect of the E Street Band’s sound to the point of straight mimicry, it’s bands like Handsome Furs who are taking a more subtle and interesting approach. Frontman Dan Boeckner showed flirtations with the Boss with “This Heart’s On Fire” from Wolf Parade’s first LP, but with Handsome Furs, Boeckner and wife/collaborator Alexei Perry fully explore both the themes of much of Springsteen’s work (small town life and dead end existence, in particular) as well as some of the chord progressions. The band’s set at the Troubadour was typically excellent. Boeckner isn’t afraid to talk between songs, introducing album single “Dumb Animals” by saying the song was inspired by the unpleasant reality of having to hang out with creepy tweakers if you want to engage in the occasional smoking of meth. High marks to Boeckner for being honest about dabbling in a drug that pretty much no one thinks is “cool,” image be damned. Perry’s drum machine/keyboard work is what really sets their music apart from Boeckner’s work in Wolf Parade, and the Troubadour got the mix right: loud, loud, loud so that those deep bass kicks make the brain throb with electricity. Rumor has it the band may soon be utilizing a real live drummer, which sounds okay in theory, but I think they’re discounting the power of the machine.

— Patrick Newsom