Oooh, foxy: The Handsome Furs tonight at The Echoplex

June 11, 3:45 PMNYLive Music ExaminerVeronica Thew

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                       Photo courtesy of the Echoplex

A Handsome Furs concert is a life-reifying experience.  Show-goers exit the venue clung to their clothing and each other, bound by sweat and newfound faith in love and life.  Hearing impaired, pulses raging, they then hit the town or the pillow for a night of Technicolor ecstasy.   

The husband and wife duo who make up the Handsome Furs, Dan Boeckner (also of Wolf Parade) and Alexei Perry, mix a hard cocktail of business and pleasure.  They say that a mutual love of hard work and travel are key ingredients to their happy, atypical, rock and roll lifestyle. 

Masochistic romantics make great musicians.

The couple’s story is somewhat of a modern rock fairy tale: the two met at a "dead-end telemarketing job" in Montreal, fell in love, started a rock band, and released their debut album, Plague Park, in 2007 to a raving underground audience.  That year, the band visited L.A.’s The Echo on their international promotional tour.  Tonight, two years later, they’re stepping it up to a bigger venue – the Echoplex – and making even bigger headlines with their sophomore album, Face Control, released in March.  Finally, the band is being seen as its own creative entity, and more than just a side project to Wolf Parade.   

It’s a simple set up; one guy with a guitar, one girl with a synth machine, two microphones.  But the band’s sound expands and multiplies on itself like a hall of mirrors.  Onstage, the Handsome furs are unrelenting in their energy.  The two thump to their hard beats, manned by a restless Perry on the synth/drum machine, her feet wild and stomping.  Beside her, Boeckner stands concave against his guitar, punching, half-crying into the microphone.  Like any healthy couple, the two trade off dominant roles, depending on the song.  Sometimes Boeckner’s guitar wails and riffs while Perry’s synth is simple and supporting, and at other times the guitar sounds almost a part of Perry’s dynamic melodies and vivacious punctuations. 

Love never sounded so good. 

Their conspicuous chemistry makes any Handsome Furs show an intimate one, no matter the size.  And according to the them, it's also intended to be a transcendent one.  “This band is completely based, aesthetically and otherwise, on traveling, on absorbing places and regurgitating them in music,” Boeckner has said.   

So perhaps tonight your ears will ring with sounds of Scandinavian streets and Ukrainian dance clubs, and your toes will tap to the sound of Cuban bongos.  Or, maybe, you’ll just have an awesome time. 

Tonight's show starts at 8:30 p.m., with The Cinnamon Band and The Monolators opening.  Tickets are $13 in advance and $15 at the door, for fans 18 years or older.