For Dan Boeckner’s songwriting career, consistency has both been a selling point and, with Sound Kapital, an achilles heel for the talented musician. In Wolf Parade, Boeckner’s Springsteen-esque ear for a straightforward pop melody with just the right amount of desperate intensity has been perfectly placed to contrast Spencer Krug’s oddball tendencies. For his Handsome Furs output, his songwriting tendencies have seen their ups and down, as 2009’s Face Control was an under-appreciated statement of the power of combining Boeckner’s guitar exuberance with his wife’s (Alexei Perry) love of the synthesizer, building off the mix-bag that was their 2007 debut, Plague Park.
Thus, in many ways, Sound Kapital is a logical next step for Boeckner and Perry, as Wolf Parade slips into indefinite hiatus and Handsome Furs begins to look less like a side-project than ever. And, on paper, the recipe is there. The music of Sound Kapital distances itself from all previous Boeckner-penned tunes by dropping the guitar noise and relying primarily of the keyboard, going headfirst in kraut and new wave territory. But, at the center, is still the same melodic style that Boeckner has made a career out of. And, at the album’s best, it does work.
Single “Repatriated” uses a handclap-beat, Perry’s backing vocals, and a steady-burn to overflow in post-pop bliss. “What About Us” sounds nearly like a Cut Copy-beat, but using Boeckner’s frantic pleas to move the song beyond its “nice” and “pleasant” sonic qualities. And, “No Feelings” shows the possibilities that come when the band is at their most focussed, extending another straight-forward hook into the seven-minute realm without ever growing tired. But, these are the exceptions rather than the rules, as the majority of Sound Kapital sounds middling, like the group is trying to make something memorable, rather than just doing it.
Opener “When I Get Back” starts things off on the wrong note, opening with a nursery-rhyme verse that recalls “Jimmy Crack Corn” and never developing much past this, lacking musically by never coming in hard, heavy, or trashy enough. In fact, it is in “When I Get Back,” fast-paced near-hit “Damages,” and the schizophrenic “Memories Of The Future” that the real lacking of the album becomes apparent: Boeckner’s guitar. Handsome Furs’ greatest successes have revolved around the marriage of the band members, and the marriage of their instrumentation. But, without the dichotomy of keyboard and guitar, Handsome Furs begins to sound like a generic dance-punk project, never becoming the full-bodied experience that previous tracks, like the excellent Face Control tracks “Talking Hotel Arbat Blues” or “Radio Kaliningrad” had achieved.
But, even more problematic is the songwriting of Boeckner as a whole. The album’s most frustrating track, “Serve The People,” shows the artist comfortable and working with ease, everything that we hope he was not. Boeckner’s best work has always sounded conflicted, whether it was with a genius songwriting partner or a life-partner dueling with a different musical instrument. Instead, while it is hard to pinpoint anything wrong with Sound Kapital on a micro-level (and a great many people are likely to be happy with the collection), the resulting picture of Sound Kapital as a whole is one of complacency, making the album easy enough to like, but difficult to love.
