In the three years it took Canadian art-rock combo Wolf Parade to follow-up their widely hailed debut disc Apologies To The Queen Mary, many wondered whether they'd make it. With co-songwriters Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner attending to their own increasingly popular side-projects - Sunset Rubdown and Handsome Furs - fans felt the end was near.

Not quite, says drummer and producer Arlen Thompson, "Whenever we play together, there's always sparks. So as long as we keep doing that, I think we're OK."

On the newly released At Mount Zoomer, Wolf Parade actually sound more like a band. Where the first record alternated between songs written by Boeckner and Krug - the former's Beck-like vocals and the latter's unhinged wail - this second is more cohesive.

"It's really a record of a bunch of folks getting together, making music together," Thompson says.

"We started out with a blank slate, and wanted to have something that was pretty raw, pretty honest. There's not really too much in the way of bells and whistles. It's just us, laying ourselves down on the table."

Recorded over two years, the sessions for At Mount Zoomer were interrupted by band members taking time off to work on other projects.

Except for Thompson. The 28-year-old engineered and produced the album. "I never really stepped away," Thompson says. "I was always sort of working on it, chipping away at it."

This period marked a strangely quiet stretch for a band whose first album arrived in the middle of 2005's Arcade Fire-inspired Montreal-is-the-new-Seattle hype. "Everyone here thought it was a bit overdone," says Thompson on the phone from Montreal. "If anything, the Montreal scene is bigger and better now than it was three years ago, when it was supposed to be the centre of the musical world."

Wolf Parade are Montreal transplants, its members hailing from various outposts of British Columbia. Personnel for the band were recruited quickly when Arcade Fire offered Spencer Krug an opening slot for a 2003 show.

"We didn't sit down and set out to make a band together," Thompson recalls. "Dan and Spencer had been working on material for just a few weeks. I got a call out of the blue and joined the day before the first show. I think we might've had two practices together before we played."

Wolf Parade toured with Isaac Brock and indie band Modest Mouse. He exhorted Sub Pop Records in Seattle to sign the band and produced Apologies To The Queen Mary.

The critical acclaim that met their debut was, for Wolf Parade, unexpected.

"We got the sense that something was happening but the extent to which it did was a surprise," Thompson says. "It still surprises me how we keep going, and more and more people are excited by what we do.

"I never thought we'd get to the level that we are at."

The band were confident they had an audience for their second release and felt able to take a few risks.

"We knew that what we did would appeal to people who like what we do," Thompson says.

"We didn't feel like we had to work to impress people. We just focused on trying to come up with really fresh ideas, to make an album that was a little more 'out there'."

Anthony Carew

At Mount Zoomer is out on Sub Pop, through Stomp.