Blue Plate Special: Handsome Furs

Handsome Furs was a Montreal-based indie rock duo formed in the mid 2000s by husband and wife collaborators Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry. Emerging alongside Boeckner’s work with Wolf Parade and Atlas Strategic, the project offered a more stripped-down and restless creative outlet built around travel, experimentation, and immediacy. Signing with Sub Pop Records in 2006, the band released three albums, Plague Park (2007), Face Control (2009), and Sound Kapital (2011), each shaped by extensive international touring across Eastern Europe and Asia. Their experiences abroad became central to the band’s identity, informing not only lyrical themes but also the sociopolitical atmosphere surrounding their music. The title itself came from a short story Perry was writing at the time of the band’s formation, reflecting a literary sensibility that carried through their work until the duo announced their breakup on May 17, 2012.

Musically, Handsome Furs fused post-punk urgency with electronic minimalism, rejecting the notion that synthesizer-driven music lacked emotional weight. Drum machines, analog keyboards, and jagged guitar lines combined to create songs that felt raw, kinetic, and intensely human. Influenced by artists such as Suicide and Fad Gadget, as well as early electronic pioneers and Eastern Bloc industrial scenes discovered during their travels, the duo pursued imperfection over polish, favoring live synchronization and tactile performance rather than programmed precision. Their imagery drew heavily from urban nightlife, Cold War landscapes, crowded neon streets, and the creative resistance of artists working under pressure. Albums like Face Control, inspired by Moscow club culture, and Sound Kapital, written largely on the road, captured a sense of motion and cultural collision. Across their catalog, Handsome Furs balanced anxiety and optimism, channeling culture shock, political observation, and the exhilaration of unfamiliar places into urgent dance music that remained grounded in lived experience.

Some of my favorites from their catalog:

Memories of the Future – from the album Sound Kapital (2011)

 

Evangeline – from the album Face Control (2009)

 

Cannot Get, Started – from the album Plague Park (2007)

 

Cheap Music – from the album Sound Kapital (2011)

 

Nyet Spasiba – from the album Face Control (2009)

 

Repatriated – from the album Sound Kapital (2011)

 

Radio Kaliningrad – from the album Face Control (2009)

 

What About Us? – from the album Sound Kapital (2011)