Wolf Parade
Expo 86
(Stomp)
by Max Lavergne
It’s only been five years since Wolf Parade became household names (in, uh, a select few ultra-hip households) thanks to their debut,
Apologies To The Queen Mary. But in that time the band’s Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner have moved through several evolutionary cycles as songwriters. Every musician wants to say their new album is a progression from their last, but in Krug’s and Boeckner’s cases, it’s both true and easily chartable on a graph, since they’ve clocked an average of one album per person per year. After a catchy and likable Wolf Parade debut, they both released obscure records with side projects (Krug with Sunsuet Rubdown and Boeckner as Handsome Furs) before reuniting for a more obtuse second Wolf Parade album,
At Mount Zoomer. Then came an acclaimed, accessible record apiece from their respective other bands, and here we are:
Expo 86. To say our two heroes are prolific would be a vast understatement.
And luckily for our graph, it’s a good one (I hate having an outlying stat this early in a graph). The “songwriting process” is often mythologised as mysterious and fickle, but here it’s pretty clear that practice has come close to making perfect. Last month, Dan Boeckner
told The Vine that
Expo 86’s simpler recording process, with fewer overdubs and less studio post-production, had energised the band, and that’s easy to hear on songs like charismatic album opener ‘Cloud Shadow on the Mountain’. It’s classic Wolf Parade: intriguingly bizarre, exuberant, catchy and hilarious (you know you’re in for a good time when you hear Krug hollerin’ that you’re
“not just another pair of boat shoes, walking away from the harbour.” Because he’s right, you’re not. You’re better than that.)
The song’s also an instant break from the proggy, at-times ponderous
At Mount Zoomer. Saying Spencer Krug has a boner for the bizarre is only slightly less obvious than saying Mel Gibson shouldn’t try for a career in audiobooks, and that tendency works out better when things are kept relatively brief and punchy.
That early win is followed up by a Boeckner track that illustrates how intuitive the relationship between these songwriters has become. The two still write separately, but where you could once draw a line between Krug’s absurdist jams and Boeckner’s fervent bangers with relative ease, that’s no longer possible. This is an impressively
album-sounding album: it feels petty to compare Krug and Boeckner on a track-by-track basis when, if you didn’t know Wolf Parade was powered by two songwriters, you wouldn’t guess.
That’s probably another way that practice has helped: Boeckner says, “now we've been in this band for a while - and friends for a while - we both have internalised this kind've idea that 'Spencer's songs are gonna be like this. [His] lyrical content is going to be like that cause that's what he does. My songs are going to be like this', and we'll bring them together.” That bodes well for future Wolf Parade albums. Because
Expo 86 is a very good album that feels like it’s not quite the band’s A-game. Krug’s and Boeckner’s abilities as songwriters are undeniable, and they’re only getting better at writing together, but there are still moments that don’t take off like they should. Put it down to their frenetic release schedule: ten albums in five years can’t not be creatively draining.
Max Lavergne