A couple of years ago, Britt Daniel attended a Handsome Furs show and struck up a conversation with the band's co-leader, Dan Boeckner. He half-joked that the two should start their own band, which shouldn't be surprising. If you squinted, you'd swear that "Modern World", most indie fans' first taste of Boeckner via Wolf Parade's 2005 debut, could've been a Daniel performance. Five years later, on "Written in Reverse" and "Got Nuffin", Daniel tried on a ragged, blues-derived yowl that seemed pulled straight from Boeckner's own boozy playbook. The comparisons go on: Both frontmen are masculine but not macho. Both can sell lyrics like, "When you believe, they call it rock'n'roll," and, "it was a torch driving the savages back to the trees," with utter sincerity and no trace of cheese. When Boeckner found himself without a band after the Furs' 2011 dissolution, it only seemed right to join forces. From March to May of this year, the two decamped in a Los Angeles recording studio with New Bomb Turks drummer Sam Brown, keyboardist Alex Fischel, and producer Nick Launay to knock out A Thing Called Divine Fits.
At a time when bedroom artists are free to release .zip archives of whatever was on their mind last week, and inter-album dead zones are marked by interest-maintaining live "sessions," a project like Divine Fits might feel like a decadent 1970s version of that precarious line in rock lore between restless creativity and sheer indulgence. Though he's adamant to distance himself from the Paleolithic term "supergroup," for Daniel, the project would seem to tip toward the indulgent. His primary band is not only commercially successful, but it's been cruising at a creative peak without dipping for more than a decade now. His contributions to Fits testify to the fact that with Spoon, he owns an indie rock lane so completely that anyone who even ventures over to the left side of the piano risks having to pay a royalty.
None of Daniel's contributions are as risky or instant-classic sounding as the best Spoon songs, but I'm not exactly complaining. B+ Britt Daniel is still really good. "Flaggin a Ride" (is there a more Classic Rock song title?) seems to be written about Daniel asking Boeckner to collaborate, over a rhythm track that sounds like something he's been sitting on for years. On the co-penned "What Gets You Alone", Daniel backs Boeckner's lyrics with a tune that merges the hard driving "Jonathan Fisk" with the acoustic shredder "Sister Jack". Daniel also provides the album's only cover, a version of the Boys Next Door's goth classic "Shivers", which he wears like a glove.
For Boeckner, however, the stakes feel much higher. A career collaborator, he's played the glammed-out hesher to Spencer Krug's yowling mystic in the permanently hiatused Wolf Parade, and allowed Alexei Perry's art-damaged electronic wizardry to drive Handsome Furs into straight-up synth-pop territory by the time of that group's 2011 swan song. Whereas Spoon is the model of indie rock stability and consistency, Boeckner's career has been rewarding in its unpredictability. He more than rises to the occasion. A Thing Called Divine Fits might seem the Platonic ideal of indie rock collaboration, but the most memorable moments have Boeckner's signature.
On the woozy, swaggering "Baby Get Worse", the guy who penned "This Heart's on Fire" mixes artistic and romantic separation anxieties, pleading, "my heart was beating in and out of time." On the taut, pulsating opener "My Love is Real", Boeckner adopts Daniel's gift for space and concision, while the song's refrain ("My love is real/ Until it stops") manages to be both highly practical and vaguely threatening. Love dies, but the question of who does the killing is left unanswered. The suicide of Russian futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and Roman Polanski's dark relationship psychodrama Knife in the Water both make cameo appearances for good measure, and the song's over in less than three minutes. On the other end of the spectrum, the stripped-down sincerity of "Civilian Stripes" is an achingly pretty acoustic number detailing the quiet dignity of rejoining the straight world. Boeckner pins his heart on his sleeve while Daniel stays in the cut, contributing only a minimalist piano bridge between the two verses. It's a perfectly sequenced quiet moment for the album, and ranks among the quickly growing list of Boeckner's finest performances.
Down to its tongue-in-cheek title, A Thing Called Divine Fits can seem at first blush like a one-off vanity project, two experienced mechanics building a hot rod in a garage over a few weekends, or two NBA players meeting up for summer pickup ball. Daniel and Boeckner both claim it's an ongoing project, however, and rock fans should hope they stick to their promise. Like Mary Timony teaming up with two-thirds of Sleater-Kinney for Wild Flag, it's a match too good to be true, and-- particularly considering the sad state of Modern Rock in 2012-- far too promising to let die.
