Boeckner “Boeckner!”
There are dozens of make you stop and stare photos of The Clash. But the one that drops my jaw every time is Bob Gruen’s 1979 shot of Paul, Joe & Mick edging towards the front of stage at the Orpheum in Boston. On the far left is Paul, legs split wide, bottom lip pouting, bass fully extended, with the most “fuck yeah” affect imaginable. On the far right is Mick Jones, reconceiving Pete Townshend by way of Seventies Kung Fu Cinema, baring most of his English teeth as though to confirm the obvious — that he’s voracious. And then, in the middle, of course, is Joe Strummer, who was — next to Marilyn Monroe — the twentieth century’s greatest photographic subject.
In Gruen’s pic Strummer is dressed in black, cowboy on top and militant down below. His pompadour is shorn and spiked but still years away from the Casbah mohawk. In comparison to his bandmates, he’s not doing anything so unusual — he’s just up there being Joe Strummer, singing the shit out of a song. But it doesn’t matter, because even at his least engaged — I’d bet even when he was dozing off, drunk on a couch somewhere after midnight — Joe Strummer could not not be cool. The Clash were Important. Mick Jones was amazing. But Joe Strummer was the coolest.
Quite possibly the coolest to ever do the job. In the decades long history of rarified Rock dudes, there’s a spectrum that begins at Fucking Great and ends at Beyond Fucking Cool. I think it’s fair to say that The Beatles are closer to the former while The Stones are closer to the latter. That Mick is closer to the former while Keith is closer to the latter. On the far left of the spectrum — the Great end — we have Paul and John (and George for that matter) and Brian Wilson and Neil Young and even Kurt Cobain. On the right side — the Cool end — we’d have Keith and Prince and young Elvis and late Sixties Dylan and Nick Cave and Serge Gainsbourg and, most definitely, Joe Strummer. Now I’m not sure who invented this delineation. I don’t know if I read it in Spin Magazine in 1994 or if my camp friend’s big brother shared it with me along with some skunk weed or — honestly — if I just made it up. Its origins are unimportant — what matters is that I assume it to be fact and have for as long as I can remember.
You get the point. The rubric survives. The list evolves. Occasionally new faces crop up on the board — Jack White and James Mercer = Great, while Britt Daniel and Craig Finn = Cool. But the thing that has never budged since I figured out the difference between Great and Cool is that no Rock and Roll man has ever been so cool as Joe Strummer. That is fact. It had been since before the Bob Gruen pic. And it has been every day since, with the possible exception of March 20th, 2009, when, at 1pm Central Standard Time, in Austin’s midday sun, Dan Boeckner took one last drag of his cigarette, flicked the butt, and sauntered on stage at Club DeVille, where a thousand wristbanded day drinkers who were waiting for The Hold Steady had their minds summarily blown.
That day, Boeckner was playing alongside his then wife Alexei Perry as Handsome Furs. I’d seen him perform live many times before, mostly as the guitarist and slightly less than half frontman in Wolf Parade, playing Joe Strummer to Spencer Krug’s Brian Wilson. There had always been something about Boeckner. His halting, crooning howl. His hair standing somewhere between punk spike and greasy pompadour. The way he sang every note and hit every chord as though he’d died on stage for a split second before some felt but unseen current reanimated him. Whatever it was — probably all of those things — totally worked.
In 2004 in Long Beach, California I saw Boeckner play a morning show before a couple hundred people in a park meant to hold thousands with an energy that suggested “I know that Modest Mouse and Lou Reed are headlining this thing and I dig Modest Mouse and Lou Reed but also fuck Modest Mouse and Lou Reed.” And I saw him play a year later in Montreal when his band opened for Arcade Fire and when he was far and away the most important person in the room even though his band was maybe not even the second most important band in Montreal. Yes — I’d seen Dan Boeckner play many times before. But not like that day in Austin.
Him, in jeans and a tank top, tattered to the point that it resembled gauze or a war torn flag more than an article of clothing. Her, in a leopard print one piece jumper and sunglasses. Him on guitar. Her on synthesizer. Him, like Sid Vicious with an unfinished grad school degree in Marx. Her, like Nancy Spungeon with a PHD in Derrida. Together, you could not not look at them. They were simply magnificent. It did not seem like they — as organisms — were especially well suited for midday outdoor shows. They looked like a couple who drank expensive red wine all night that had been gifted to them on account of their awesomeness. They played songs that sounded like Joy Division trying to imitate The Pixies. Or maybe The Clash if they swapped Reggae for early Techno. It was dance music that was also Rock and Roll and also possibly socialist propaganda that was too slow to dance to but also too exciting to sit and ponder. I’d seen greater performances. I’d heard greater songs. But for the three minutes of “All We Want Baby is Everything,” I could have sworn that Dan Boeckner was the coolest person I’d ever seen in my life.
Boeckner looked a good deal like young Joe Strummer that day. He was thinner. A little prettier. Gave off vibes that were more bougie than proletariat. But otherwise the comparison was obvious to the point of homage. In fact, maybe even more than he resembled Joe Strummer, Boeckner resembled the three fourths of The Clash featured in that 1979 Gruen photo. In fact, more than he resembled seventy-five percent of The Clash, he looked like Joe Strummer, Nick Cave, Serge Gainsbourg spliced their DNA and had a Canadian baby. I know almost nothing of Boeckner’s childhood or his parents or their parents, but it seems to me that he was specifically genetically engineered to be Cool.
Unto itself, being Cool is only so cool. But, Boeckner presents the much rarer version of cool — hyper-intelligent, sharp-witted, self-possessed and also somehow offhanded. His version of cool is what makes it possible for him to be 1B to Spencer Krug’s 1A in Wolf Parade. Or 1B to Britt Daniel’s 1A in Divine Fits, even though it seems like Britt very much viewed Dan as 1A. Or 4B as an overqualified sideman in Arcade Fire even though any time he joins the band he risks unmasking Win Butler as definitely not Cool. There is a reason why everyone seems to want Dan Boeckner in their band and it’s not simply for his singing and guitar playing. It’s because he’s cooler than twenty-first century Fonzie.
For all my fawning, you’d think that I was a superfan — that I’d hung around for the side projects, been first in line for the Wolf Parade reboots, etcetera, etcetera. But that’s not the case. By my recount, I have three Wolf Parade EPs, their debut, the first two Handsome Furs albums and…that’s it. I’m not sure I can explain my lapsed fandom other than to say that Boeckner’s career overlapped with my decade as the father to young kids and that — perhaps more so — Boeckner’s career has felt like a series of on again off again gigs rather than a straight line or clear journey. Which is also not to suggest that Boeckner’s later output is not great. Truth is, until very recently, I had no idea. I’d passed on the more recent Wolf Parade records. I’d only dabbled in Divine Fits. I’d heard nothing from Operators. I’d spent two decades as an admirer more than a fan. And I didn’t foresee that changing until a couple months ago when, while driving with my also Boeckner-admiring wife to pick up our kids from school, KUTX in Austin played a song that maybe sounded like Wolf Parade, possibly like Arcade Fire and definitely got my heart racing enough to turn to my wife and ask, “Is that…?” To which she giddily responded, “I think so.” To which the DJ soon confirmed, “That was “Lose,” the first single from Dan Boeckner’s forthcoming solo record on Sub Pop.”
With a few minor exceptions (I prefer Bob Seger to Slint) my wife and I like a lot of the same music — no surprise. Moreover, the early days of our romance coincided with the 2004 Canadian invasion of Indie Rock. But our relationship to Boeckner has always felt different. More parasocial crush or aesthetic commendation than musical appreciation. And perhaps mostly a parasocial crush on Boeckner and Perry — their uber-cool, unrepressed egos that enchanted our idealized, repressed ids. That it might be Boeckner and Perry who I’d projected onto, rather than just Boeckner, begged the question: was his loner coolness a feature that could only be revealed in relationship to something or someone? I wondered whether there was something about Boeckner next to Alexei Perry or alongside Spencer Krug or Britt Daniel that made him seem so special? And, in turn, whether he could pull it off as Dan Boeckner, unpaired — simply as “Boeckner.”
I’d find it out soon enough. Less than two months after our local radio station played its first single, I received a text from my wife stating “Boeckner! (with an exclamation point) is here (also with an exclamation point)!” I rushed home, boxcut the package and observed a glorious something that resembled a Polish import of a mid-Sixties Serge Gainsbourg album. The font was giving mid-century socialism while the photo of Boeckner’s face, peering out from total darkness, was half orange-lit man, half green-tinted monster. It’s an amazing piece of design, the sort of cover that forces you to stop and take note — which I did. But as soon as the album art released me from its grip, I removed the orange vinyl from its sleeve and placed it on the platter. A minute later, I heard that song again.
“Lose” is instantly familiar and equally stirring. One synth is Wolf Parade. The other is Spoon. The bass and drums are Arcade Fire. And then comes Boeckner, with that unsteady croon — an instrument both all his own and in deep debt to Alan Vega, Lux Interior and Bruce Springsteen. Yes — The Boss. “Boeckner!” has more than a little “I’m On Fire” about it and quite a lot of “Tunnel of Love” to it. It’s not explicitly a divorce album, but there is deep, middle-age malaise throughout. Most notably on “Ghost in the Mirror,” wherein the youthful dreams have dissolved and the singer can no longer find himself. The more I hear it, the harder it gets to not picture Bruce, back in ‘84, checking his look in the mirror, wanting to change his clothes, his hair, his face. Forty years later, middle age (Bruce was only thirty-three at the time of “Dancing In the Dark,” but if we adjust for inflation) ennui apparently hasn’t changed all that much — it’s a lot of ghosts, mirrors and dreams.
Unlike Handsome Furs, Boeckner features (mostly) live drumming. And not just any drummer, but obsessed over, California session man, Matt Chamberlain, who’s held the position for everyone from Dylan to Pearl Jam to Bowie to Fiona Apple. Chamberlain is a guy. And here he’s the guy who keeps things appropriately tense, if steady, while Boeckner oozes romance and stutters anxiety. That’s the thing he does best. It’s what makes the chase of “Euphoria” euphoric. And conversely, its absence is what makes the second gear, waiting for something to happen of “Dead Tourists” kind of listless. Boeckner’s injured melodies need rhythmic consistency to rub up against in the same way that his indomitable cool relies on contrast from a bandmate or partner or a bandmate who’s also a partner or. Anxiety is his euphoria. Formally speaking, it’s what turns him on.
At just eight songs and barely thirty minutes, “Boeckner!” is closer to EP than LP. And if judged as an EP — the format which Wolf Parade chose to thrice introduce themselves way back when — I’d call it a success. A couple misses, a couple stash aways and four songs that justify the titular exclamation point. But considered as an LP, “Boeckner!” does feel a bit small. Or rather a little short. Which sends me back to Joe Strummer — Boeckner’s spiritual forebear and the most important guy in the most important band in the world who never had the will or the want or the whatever to be that guy outside of The Clash. As magnetically cool and as evidently smart and talented as he might be, Boeckner — like Strummer, like most of us — needs a partner. Twenty years with Spender Krug. A glorious season with Britt Daniel. Five plus years with Alexei Perry. And, for nearly decade with Devojka, Boeckner’s bandmate in Operators and co-writer on half of “Boeckner!”
Oddly, as of this very morning, it appears that Boeckner’s relationship with Devojka — a creative and personal union — is over. Which recasts “Boeckner!” as something closer to “Tunnel of Love” than to “Born in The U.S.A.” So, maybe the comp isn’t Joe Strummer after all. Maybe it’s Bruce. Maybe it was always The Boss, who made a bunch of albums on his own but who was never better than he was with The E. Street Band. And who was neurotic and unlucky in love and on fire and dancing in the dark. Dan Boeckner will never be as commercially successful as Bruce Springsteen in the same way that Bruce was never — not even on the cover of “Darkness on the Edge of Town” — as cool as Dan Boeckner. But for their many differences, they are united by their defiance, even in defeat, their disillusion, even in promise, and their loneliness, especially in desire.