wolf parade by lindsay

A Week With Wolf Parade's "At Mount Zoomer": Day 5

11 September 2008
tell your friends... tell your friends...

Words by Kyle Smith // Illustration by Lindsay Preston

Maybe they are the band to gather groupies on a tour bus from town to town, singing along to “This Heart’s On Fire” while casually espousing nuggets of life philosophy garnered from life on the road, but something about Wolf Parade’s two-day stay in Seattle suggests differently. Nevermind that Dan Boeckner is married to Alexei Perry, his cohort in Handsome Furs; the group barely has time for roadies, steadily readying their own equipment at both shows I saw.

The first was closing Sub Pop’s 20th anniversary festival, where the band drew a far smaller crowd than the previous night’s Flight of the Conchords. Boeckner thanked the label and commented that 1998 was one of the most underrated years in its history—a curious comment itself, given those were Sub Pop’s least iconic years, post-grunge and pre-Shins, though it did see the release of The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Munki, which I imagine is a favorite of Boeckners.

But nevermind all that rigamarole. I last saw Wolf Parade open for the Arcade Fire in Minneapolis in 2004, and it’s always comforting to see bands with a continuity of stage location. Spencer Krug sets up his wonderful keyboard to the left, Boeckner occupies the middle of the stage, angled toward the crowd in a way that highlights his Flat Stanley-esque figure. Hadji Bakara fucks with sound to the right, Arlen Thompson (he of the actual Mount Zoomer) pounds away, and former Hot Hot Heat member and all-around nice guy Dante DeCaro.

Besides orientation and stage banter, I have as much trouble explaining why I enjoy Wolf Parade live as much as I’ve struggled with their record. The band politely mixed the two albums, nearly playing At Mount Zoomer in full (I believe they skipped “Bang Your Drum” but I might be mistaken) and all the hits from Apologies. The second night, at the small dark Neumo’s, they followed another startling performance from festival knockouts Foals—I cannot recall the last time an unimpressive album was played so captivatingly—by coming right out and playing “Grounds for Divorce,” which Krug acknowledged they had retired years ago and were only playing for a friend.

What a band does and doesn’t play on their setlist is better left to the fans who follow such things every night of a tour; who memorize discographies and b-sides and cover tendencies. But I have an anecdote on the issue of “Grounds for Divorce/” During that 2004 tour, a friend of mine screamed at Spencer to play the song during a show in Chicago; he actually responded by saying that the song was dead, never to be played again. For a band touring on their first LP, this seemed either supremely cocky or genuinely embarrassed: I imagine Radiohead still cringes to think about half the songs on Pablo Honey.

But here, playing “Grounds for Divorce” ceded the band’s playfulness, erasing the seriousness from their prolonged set-up and the darkness of some of their songs. I would never go so far as to characterize them as just another rock band happy to rock your socks off, but after a summer of this shit I’m still struggling to make heads or tails of the Wolf Parade tale.

Sub Pop Records

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