wolf parade by lindsay

A Week With Wolf Parade's "At Mount Zoomer": Day 4

4 September 2008
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Words by Kyle Smith // Illustration by Lindsay Preston

Whatever “rocked” about Apologies to the Queen Mary — the conventional song structures, the hooks, the quotables — is not immediately apparent on At Mount Zoomer. The language of Wolf Parade that I knew, strengthened through dozens of ritualized listens, does not apply to this release.

This is especially true on “Fine Young Cannibals,” a song that steadily walks toward a sinister guitar solo. A “Dan” song, it has more of the indeterminate descriptions of a Handsome Furs song like “Dumb Animals.” “I’ve/been/told…/of new fast days,” he shrieks, each word its own stanza.

“Kissing the Beehive” has its punctual crashes of rock instruments; here they’re isolated, like a rock song stretched out rather than compressed (like, say, “Ill Believe In Anything). But with “An Animal In Your Case,” the track that follows it, we’re enveloped in a colorless realm free for us to imagine. Spacious, imaginative rock songs don’t come around too often; but each of these are compositions that change with mood and season. They’re songs without a specific agenda; as much as I’d like to investigate Boeckner and Krug’s turns of phrase I’m usually content with hypnotic calls like “Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!,” or “I will crawl right back to you.” Stalker anthems, joyous outpourings, dark meditations, hard-edged rockers, Canadian poets of ill repute, bursts of summery innocence: Wolf Parade can be all things to all comers.

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