LMF - Wolf Parade

So, I have this old friend from high school who is a huge music junkie, and he sends me so much new stuff that I can't even keep track of it, but he has introduced me to a lot of the music that I listen to. Back in the Summer of 2007, Jeff and I went to the Download Festival at the Pavilion at Northerly Island in Chicago. (If you haven't seen a show there, it's kind of cool. Medium-sized outdoor pavilion, right on Chicago's lakeshore at the museum campus, overlooking the marina.)

That day, we were able to see a number of bands, several of which I continue to follow. That lineup included The Shins, Band of Horses, Minus the Bear, Brand New, Wolf Parade, several other bands we had zero interest in, and then - of course - Snoop Dogg. (Snoop was the shit, but don't ask me why he was on that bill.) Drinking in the sun all day and having Snoop close it down after dark was reason enough to go. Jeff, as he always does a couple of weeks before dragging me to see bands I don't know, sent me a data CD containing MP3s of every song ever released by each of the bands - excluding Snoop. After sifting through some of that, I got interested in Wolf Parade. We tried to time it right to miss some of the bands we weren't as interested in, but we arrived mid-afternoon, smack-dab in the middle of Wolf Parade's set. Whammy! Anyway, I got to see enough to know that I dug it.

Wolf Parade is another bunch of fuckin' Canadiens, like Arcade Fire from last week. In fact, these bands know one another pretty well from the Montreal music scene. Anyway, Wolf Parade is a band whose core was literally thrown together in a couple of weeks in 2003 to fill an available slot on a tour. After adding another member or two to get to their current lineup, we find that they have two "lead singers" (Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug) with very different voices and styles, who also happen to be good songwriters with very different ideas. Their 2005 debut full-length album, Apologies to the Queen Mary, exhibited these two distinct "voices" - literally and figuratively - and it is an incredible debut album. I didn't get into their 2008 follow-up, At Mount Zoomer, quite as much, but I still may digest that one more in the future. They use guitars, drums, bass, keyboards and a good number of electronic noise-makers. Given the two song-writing influences and vocalists, I find that the songs bounce back and forth between the Krug songs sounding quite a bit like the dreamy, modern sound of Arcade Fire to the Boeckner songs sounding like a cross between the Clash and the Cars, meaning driving rock songs with keyboard accents and more direct vocals.

I've decided to include an example of each from Apologies. Deal with it. The first is a Krug song on the dreamy, modern side - a song called "I'll Believe in Anything." This was the song I really wanted to see performed live, and we walked in as it was starting. Mission accomplished. Again, one of those things where I was wondering how they would pull it off live. Well done.

Krug's lyrics are trippy and full of imagery:

Give me your eyes, I need sunshine
Give me your eyes, I need sunshine
Your blood, your bones, your voice
And your ghost



Switching to the other singer and songwriter, Boeckner, for a totally different vocal and a totally different vibe, here is "Shine a Light." This is what I was getting at with melding the keyboard-driven synth-pop of the Cars with the driving rock vibe of the Clash. This constant variety makes for an interesting album, and a very entertaining live show.

Boeckner's lyrics are more practical and straightforward, but very effective:

I spend boring hours in the office tower
In a bus, on a bus back home to you
That's fine, I'm barely alive
It's just a matter of time
No one gets out alive
I'm content, I'm content, I'm content to be quiet
Some will sink, some will get called to the light

You know our hearts beat time out very slowly
You know our hearts beat time, they're waiting for something that'll never arrive