anything associated with wolf parade is good and this is no exception.handsome furs‘ (featuring none other than dan boeckner of wolf parade) first record (plague park) is here and it is what you probably expect (good). basically, it takes dan’s weird, quivering wolf parade vocals and replaces the music with a sort of artsy panache somewhat evocative of tv on the radio. kind of sad, kind of muted, but still expressive(!), plague park stumbles around kind of like a drunken teenager in a small town and vomits sweetness. “handsome furs hate the city” is sort of like two moments in one: (1) at 4am when you are moderately drunk and walking around listening to music in a suburban town somewhere and no one is awake and you start wondering if they are all dead because they might as well be dead, and (2) when you are driving through traffic at lunchtime and the cars are barely moving and even though there are hundreds or thousands of people around it kind of seems like there are none and that everything is just a vaguely sculpted pseudo-reality of humanity and culture and you start to wonder wtf everything is really about anyway.

with so many deliberately vicious, vitriolic reminders of the mundanity of our lives, this album’s cunning melodies will ttly stop your heart in a way that you thought was only possible with booze. really, this record is about as close as you’ll get to being sad and walking around town late at night drinking a 40 without actually doing it.