Handsome Furs - "[Unknown title]". The first times I saw Wolf Parade, I didn't know them as people so I had to imagine names for the members. Thus it was "Black Max" yowlin' away at his keyboards and "Nick Danger" herky-jerking with his guitar, always a little sickly. (I don't think I came up with a name for Arlen, and Dante hadn't joined yet. And Hadji's name I didn't need to make up because he was in my historiography class.) But yeah, Spencer Krug was Black Max and Dan Boeckner was Nick Danger. Nick Danger had veins in his arms and rings under his eyes.

Wolf Parade's got side-projects. Spencer has Sunset Rubdown (and now Swan Lake). Hadji has his Master's degree. Arlen produces the likes of AIDS Wolf. Dante has "Dante DeCaro". And now Dan has Handsome Furs.

This is a song from Dan Boeckner's upcoming solo record. I don't know its title. What I know is that it's not by Nick Danger. It's not by someone who panics. It's by someone with broken bottles and a whole lot of patience.

When it begins - just the tickle of guitar and Dan's crackly, clipping voice, - you think "okay". But then what happened to me is that out of this lofi soup came the HUGE fucking lurch of wheezy organ, the clomp of drums like workman boots. Listening to it on my computer speakers now I don't hear it the same way - but then it was on the stereo and I swear the bass hit me like a punch to the chest. I flew backward, right through the drywall, slamming into the bricks. Dust everywhere. And still the song coming through the wire - dark, persistent, fisted. A bluecollar song; a heartstarting song; something to resuscitate a man after a year on the road.

It ends much too soon, much too soon, before the track's taken on any of the mandolin's magic realism. While it's still just concrete and sugarwater and orange sodium light. While I'm still lying there, gasping.

[I have no idea when this record is being released. What I know is that it will probably be on Sub Pop, and that Handsome Furs is touring Scandinavia in May.]

Darondo - "Didn't I". Soul music that moves like an old loom, shuttling back and forth, knitting a pattern over your heartache - something made of thick and solid fibres, strong enough to heft that weight, strong enough to throw your heart up in the air and then catch it again. See your heart glinting as it's thrown? That's sunlight, and blood. That's life.

Sometimes, listening to Darondo, I think of a cartoon-strip wanderer. A man in rags who drags himself across the desert, dying of thirst. And even as he approaches an oasis he uses his last dry gasps to sing a soft and crooning song. Choosing a hot little tune instead of a few more steps and a gulp of springwater.

[buy]

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