Wolf Parade, Expo 86

Wolf Parade, Expo 86

Reviewed By: Chris Polley

Here’s how your average review of a Wolf Parade album goes: 1) talk about how they’ve become a vital band since their masterpiece debut Apologies to the Queen Mary, 2) discuss the songs as if the band’s work is, always has been, and always will be a dichotomous tug-o-war between the two singer-songwriters Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug, and 3) be sure to use some iteration of the phrase “Springsteen but weirder” at least once.  I don’t make such generalizations to discount the work of other reviewers, first and foremost because they all seem as excited to listen to a new Wolf Parade record as I do, but rather to point out that no other band has ever been so universally curious to music critics in such a specific way as Wolf Parade has. They’re a band that regardless of the fact that they have yet to wow us like they did with the aforementioned record from 2005, us fans of guitars, drums, and rousing vocal melodies are going to anticipate just what variation of the Wolf Parade formula we’re going to get this time around, even if results in a formulaic album review afterward.

Because unlike the predictable structure mentioned at this article’s outset, based ostensibly on a music review format that has been around as long as rock and roll itself, the latest from Boeckner, Krug, and co. is a venture into the world of sound they invented only five years ago, and will continue to be interesting at least for a couple more records. So in the meantime, we Wolf Parade fans will continue to revel in the fervor of waiting for a new collection of songs that judiciously alternate between Krug’s warbly/messy sensibilities and  Boeckner’s rousing yet cool and collected anthems. And while the prospect of diving into Expo 86 is just as titillating as the moments I spent before taking in their sophomore record At Mount Zoomer, this time (I must repeat myself here amongst the numerous other reviewers of this release) the payoff is enough to not only ensure some deserved good faith in the band for a few more years, but also to make me re-think the way I should be listening to the band from here on out anyway.

You see, ever since Apologies induced in me and many others a rabid foaming at the mouth for more intense and raucous synth-rock (with an emphasis on the “rock” part more), specifically alongside the signature voices of two lead men that basically made it feel like you were listening to two awesome records at once, all I ever wanted was to repeat that initial feeling all over again. I wanted to feel invigorated and hear an album that incited in me the same kind of energy that, in what quite possibly is the greatest conundrum a music fan will ever face, one can only feel when they hear something life-changing for the first time. Sure, after some requisite grieving I realized that what I wanted was indeed unattainable, but before that moment of actualization the band had already dropped on us the follow-up Zoomer, which was enjoyable during the first couple listens (possibly solely because my wide-eyed head-bobbing self was still on a “YES! NEW WOLF PARADE!” high that encumbers the sad and maladjusted population known as “fanboys”), and the album on the whole felt like a slight failure in its wandering prog attitude. Of course not many of us voiced that opinion too loudly because it felt almost as sacrilegious as saying you didn’t like the second season of The Wire because it took you a bit away from the streets of inner city Baltimore and focused more on the dockworkers’ union.

Of course after a whole lot of thinking and soul-searching you end up realizing that Frank and Ziggy Sobotka are actually just as compelling if not more so than Avon and D’Angelo Barksdale. It’s just that you’ve been watching the show the wrong way. You’d been expecting it to fulfill the same kind of one-of-a-kind prowess it displayed to you the first time around, so of course it didn’t live up to expectations. Now I didn’t come to this epiphany about The Wire (sorry for the TV tangent, by the way) until the gut-wrenching finale of season three, which highlighted the political/economic connection between the drug-dealing/using population of the streets and the working underclass, much less the end of season two, so it’s no surprise that I’m not reconsidering giving At Mount Zoomer another go-around until now when I’m halfway through my third listen of the quasi-brilliant third record from Wolf Parade, Expo 86. This is a band that, yes, has a formula, but they refuse to let you listen to them like they’re a formulaic band. Just because you can set your watch to the equation of Wolf Parade doesn’t mean you’re going to feel the same thing every time you listen to one of their records.

Actually, this is a good entry point, a million paragraphs later, to discuss the songs themselves. From the get go (if not from reading the quite candid interviews with Krug and Boeckner during the recording process), opening track “Cloud Shadow on the Mountain” communicates that the band wants to both get back to the cut-to-the-chase spine-chilling fist-pumping action of their debut, but also let the fringes of their freak flags fly as subtly as possible throughout. The imagery this time is less obtuse and more human, but it’s also just wacky enough to not tread into lifeless adjectives like “mature” or “growth” either. This is a band that weighs intelligence against fun both consciously and unconsciously, which is in my book a good thing, because yes, they want there to be a coherence and pop snap to the compositions, but they’re not going to sacrifice some meandering yet passionate guitar wankery for the sake of convention. Lead single “What Did My Lover Say (It Always Had to Go This Way)” proves this with every beat and wobbly strum of its nearly six-minute run time, as does the closer “Cave-o-sapien”, which may be the album’s only track to hark back to the fuck-it enthusiasm of whirring synths found in Queen Mary.  Both songs’ ridiculous titles should also indicate that Wolf Parade have no problem trying to say something in a way that makes you chuckle first, think second. This, again, is a good thing.

And why don’t you look at that – I wrote a whole block of text about songs that reel in the caustic qualities while still letting loose and didn’t even realize until now that all of them were written/led by Krug, the man behind Sunset Rubdown, and basically all of WP’s strangeness thus far in their career. So it seems the dichotomy really is true. But that’s okay, because Boeckner (of the husband-wife duo Handsome Furs, who had a breakout year in 2009 with Face Control), the man typically pinpointed as what keeps Wolf Parade from being seen as kooky as Krug’s other band, is taking some important cues from his better half just as Krug was able to learn from him and temper his wild child persona this time around, as explained above. The high points of this expertly effortless cross pollination, as far as the Boeckner songs go, actually include what I consider to be the most joyous and vivid song on the record: “Yulia”. It bangs so hard and quickly (only one of two out of eleven songs under the four-minute mark) that it’s over before you know it, but while you rock out to it, it’s ardent and inspiring as eff, conjuring up the exact kind of feelings you’d want for a distortion-driven love song, which is odd considering that Wolf Parade has never been the band to go to for romance. Boeckner does this just as well in long-form format with “Pobody’s Nerfect” and to some degree with “Little Golden Age” as well, both of which let the verses breathe a bit before the rip-roaring choruses kick in, suggesting that maybe while Krug is experimenting is the less-is-more philosophy, Boeckner is more fascinated by the way in which his soft and gooey side can infiltrate the heady rock side of the band.

Either way you cut it, the band is doing something different while still sounding distinctly Wolf Parade. This may catch on or it may not, but the fact remains that when a band you fell in love with starts declining in quality upon first glance, don’t give up. Allow for some lag time between amazement and commitment; it may very well be worth your while. Sure the latter isn’t as alluring as the former, but quite possibly the most important thing one can remember when following a band through its career is this: you are getting older and so are they. Just like you will never again be completely floored by the sounds of the band, the band will, if it’s smart, not be constantly trying to floor you over and over again. It will follow both its instincts and its reflections and try its best to balance its need for exploration with its innate need to stay true to what made it breakout in the first place. Sometimes it will match up with you if you give it time and patience and sometimes it won’t, but I for one and am over the moon that Expo 86 did this even just a little bit. And I still have infinite more listens ahead of me, and I can always skip over those few tracks that don’t hit the mixture I desire.

Rating: 85%