Handsome Furs – Face Control
I’ll say this about husband-and-wife bands: they’re either really fucking sad or they’re so earnest I want to punch them. With that said, the Handsome Furs manage to combine the element of searching that we love about Springsteen, the sophisticated synths of New Order, and some serious pop sensibilities and make it work across an entire album. 2007’s Plague Park was a great effort by a new band, but ultimately ending up teasing with its quick 9 tracks. Their live shows provided ample foot-stomping and ragged guitar-swinging entertainment, but the audience was often left feeling like they need just a little bit more.
They give us 11 tracks that can edge on brilliance, sometimes fall short of that, but keep your fist pumping or your heart throbbing throughout the duration of Face Control. This is the kind of album that seasons change with, and things are looking bright for this spring.
Dan Deacon – Bromst
There is no easier way to explain how good this album is than saying if you could make an instrument out of a group of children’s imaginations that it would sound like Bromst. I loved his 2006 record Spiderman of the Rings, fuckin’ lurved it, and although this new record sounds a lot like like his previous… it’s an entirely new expansive use of many fragments of noise we’ve heard from him before. Maddeningly good. Sadness inducing. Give me my headphones. The happiest thing I’ve ever heard.
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SL
