At the end of September Handsome Furs performed a couple Face Control tracks — “Legal Tender” and “Thy Will Be Done” — on the University of Minnesota’s Radio K. At the time, that’s all we had from the Plague Park followup. Now we can offer the studio version of “I’m Confused,” the album art, and can tell you the 12-song collection was was recorded and mixed by Wolf Parader Arlen Thompson at Mount Zoomer and was mastered by Harris Newman at Hotel2Tango. Also, Sub Pop explains the themes behind Dan and Alexei’s second album:
[Face Control] draws inspiration from Eastern Europe and re-maps Eastern Bloc surveillance state themes to contemporary life and the irony of our acceptance and embrace of self-monitoring, through blogs and facebooks and myspaces and credit/debit accounts and surveillance cameras and GPS devices.
Start decoding with “I’m Confused,” one of the biggest rockers.
Face Control is out 3/10 via Sub Pop. This is the band’s watchdog:
You can see the love birds live, including on Valentine’s Day in France.
02/09 – Berlin, Germany @ Bang Bang Club
02/11 – Paris, France @ Point Ephemere (Super Festival)
02/12 – Besançon, France @ Le Cylindre (Generiq Festival)
02/13 – Dijon, France @ Le Vapeur (Generiq Festival)
02/14 – Belfort, France @ La Poudrière (Generiq Festival)
02/15 – Zurich, Switzerland @ Abart (Generiq Festival)
02/17 – Brescia, Italy @ Lio Bar
02/18 – Milan, Italy @ La Casa 139
02/19 – Bologna, Italy @ Lokomotiv
02/20 – Rome, Italy @ Traffic (Generiq Festival)
02/21 – St. Malo, France @ Route du Rock Winder Edition Festival
03/12 – Ottawa, ON @ Mavericks
03/13 – Toronto, ON @ Horseshoe Tavern
03/14 – Ann Arbor, MI @ Blind Pig
03/15 – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
03/16 – St Louis, MO @ Off Broadway
03/17 – Columbia, MO @ Mojo’s
03/20 – Austin, TX @ Club Deville
03/21 – Dallas, TX @ The Loft
03/23 – Lawrence, KS @ Jackpot Saloon
03/25 – Fargo, ND @ Aquarium (Dempsey’s Upstairs)
03/26 – Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St Entry
03/27 – Ames, IA @ Maintenance Shop
03/28 – Iowa City, IA @ The Mill
03/30 – Newport, KY @ Southgate House
04/01 – Rochester, NY @ Bug Jar
04/02 – Syracuse, NY @ Spark Art Space
[Band photo by Liam Maloney]
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I LOVE this album sooooo mucho!
This album is MUCH different than the first. However, still good.
Also, this isn’t the best song.
That picture is hot.
part of this sounds like “Gamma Ray”
She is so fucking hot. How can anybody vote for Zooey over Alexei for indie rock crush?
Just because she’s half naked does not mean she is attractive.
you’re right, being half-naked in an of itself does not mean she is attractive, she just happens to be a half naked super hot woman.
anyway, this track is awesome and i can’t wait to hear the rest of the record.
It’s all about “All We Want, Baby, Is Everything.”
SO GOOD.
The Gum Mix is so good right now it is insane.
another fun fact about this record: According to a reliable source, the reason for the push back is rather interesting. It seems that the Furs have referenced a New Order song in the track ?All We Want, Baby, Is Everything? (aka Heaven). In order to use the reference, the band needed to legally clear it with New Order. This took some time to do and caused the release to be pushed back to March 10th.
The promo photos for this new album are incredible. Thanks for the songs!
I just did a (n early) review of the album and linked to a song not listed above (“Talking Hotel Arbat Blues”) on Lizzyville, for those interested:
http://lizzyville.blogs.com/index/2009/01/handsome-furs-face-control.html
Great song and the Radio K tracks are excellent as well…I kept listening to the videos I had to convert them to mp3 for additional listening…I can share so they can be posted…
They are not playing at The Blind Pig in Champaign, IL which was a huge disappointment. They are actually playing at Blind Pig in Ann Arbor, MI.
I second you disappointment. When I look at the date on your post, I’m really surprised that Stereogum hasn’t corrected this error yet.
missed that last time. fixed!
i had expected to see the premature evaluation by now.
get on it stereogum!