Boeckner
Boeckner!
SUB POP
Adding an exclamation point to your surname for the title of your first solo album could be seen as self-aggrandizement or, even worse, sheer arrogance. But there are some artists who can get away with it, and Dan Boeckner is one of them. Having made his name with Montreal’s Wolf Parade—as well as several high-quality side projects, including Handsome Furs, Divine Fits, and Operators—he’s entitled to such emphatic punctuation for his debut solo record. Luckily (for him and for us) this album also fully warrants it.
Consisting of eight tracks, Boeckner! was made in collaboration with producer Randall Dunn, whom he met while the latter was working on the soundtrack to Nicolas Cage’s 2018 horror flick Mandy, and session drummer Matt Chamberlain, as well as Medicine’s Brad Laner and Kiwi Jr.’s Jeremy Gaudet. As such, while it is dominated by Boeckner’s distinctive vocal warbling and phrasing, it’s far from just Wolf Parade (or Handsome Furs) lite. Rather, this is its own magical beast. From the start, the production of opener “Lose” makes that song feel like a retro-futuristic Velvet Underground—a relic of a time and place that never was—while “Ghost in the Mirror” infuses Boeckner’s trademark maudlin vocals with some super-charged Springsteen-in-the-’80s-with-all-his-muscles inflection.
That’s nothing new for Boeckner. That Springsteen influence has always been present, but it’s more salient here, more obvious, especially on that song. Elsewhere, there are subtle hints of Talking Heads, Depeche Mode, and a general ’80s aesthetic on the likes of “Wrong,” “Return to Life,” and “Euphoria.” That’s not to say, though, that these aren’t also their own things, because they very much are—anachronistic bursts of pain and pleasure (but mostly pain) that strive hard to extract some meaning from the futility of life, as well as death’s ever-looming presence. “Euphoria” is a song about embracing the moment while we can. “We are only down here for a moment,” he sings at one point, “We will meet again” he sings at another. In the space between, there are lifetimes and lives long vanished, but never forgotten.
That might seem like a perfect note for the album to end on, but it doesn’t. That honor goes to “Holy Is the Night,” another parallel universe Velvets cut, but one that offers a ray of sunlight to the gloom that precedes it. It feels like the end of winter, the start of summer, like falling in love, like remembering what it feels like and means to be alive—a powerfully startling end to a majestic record about cherishing what we have before it’s too late.
