Sound Kapital

Personnel: Arlen Thompson (percussion).
Audio Mixers: Jonas Verwijnen; Antti Joas.
Recording information: Mount Zoomer; Thee Mighty Hotel 2 Tango.
First off, the full-frontal shot of a naked woman on the cover of Handsome Furs' third album, Sound Kapital, hardly reflects their music. In fact, it might be a way of overcompensating for a more traditional record. For this one, Wolf Parade's Dan Boeckner and his wife, Alexei Perry, put down the guitars to craft songs entirely out of keyboards and drum machines, and this smoothed-out synth pop approach puts them in the same wheelhouse as mainstream acts like Phoenix and Hot Chip, which doesn't entirely suit them. The lack of guitars is the biggest change of pace from Plague Park or Face Control, but also, where the last was set in a post-Soviet Russian landscape, Sound Kapital was inspired by the last two years of traveling Asia. Aspects of J-pop and K-pop seem to have permeated their mindset, since, as an electronic duo, everything is light, peppy, straight-ahead, and modern-sounding, often to the point of sounding inhuman. As Boeckner repeats the words "I have no feelings" in the last song, he seems to be driving home a point. Prior Handsome Furs outings had a lot more emotion behind them. ~ Jason Lymangrover