Wolf Parade - No Hook In Sight

Media moguls and home-based bloggers have watched Wolf Parade evolve from the quirky newbies to the full-fledged masters of weird — now known for carrying their unconventional, multi-layered arrangements and howl-yelp vocal styles in tow like a pocketed trademark. The Montreal indie-rockers conquered "the debut album" with the brilliant Apologies to the Queen Mary in 2005, and avoided "the sophomore slump" by putting out the darker, yet still pleasant puzzler At Mount Zoomer in 2008. But now what?

Even Wolf Parade knows that they are venturing into a territory unbeknownst to them: a record with no real hook for the press. But with or without catchy headlines and taglines, they are confident that they've created a very special body of work that will make its own mark in the band's history. According to frontman and guitarist Dan Boeckner, Expo 86 is the most honest record they've ever made. On this third effort, they've taken on a new recording process and a deeper openness when it comes to songwriting and collaboration, all of which can be attributed to their tighter-than-ever group dynamics. "Musically the band is more together than we've been since we first started," he explained. So just when fans thought that the group had realized their true sound and were satisfied remaining in their comfort zone, Boeckner, Spencer Krug (frontman/keyboards), Arlen Thompson (drums), and Dante DeCaro (guitar/bass/percussion/keyboards) are discovering new ways to change. Change for the better.

But they didn't exactly stumble into a crossroad as much as it found them. Towards the tail-end of 2008, as Wolf Parade were about to tour Europe in support of At Mount Zoomer, their longtime keyboardist and friend Hadji Bakara left rather abruptly to pursue a doctorate in English at the University of Chicago. Of course, there were no hard feelings regarding his departure, and even Boeckner was the first to admit that Bakara was "better at writing about writing" than being in a rock band. But even so, quickly, they had to mend themselves and deal with being one man down.

Rather than get frazzled or go on a mini hiatus to find a replacement, they reevaluated each of their roles in the band and the way in which they made music. The band shake-up made them closer. Boeckner confessed, "As cheesy as it is to say, one thing that I hold dear about this band is that even though we've been playing music together for almost seven years, we are all really good friends, best friends even. We all have a deep emotional connection with one another." And with that in mind, they decided to record their upcoming material live, setting aside all the hullabaloo of laying down random song parts, which would then be edited and spliced together via computer. Although it was a first for them, it was an idea that had been begging to be explored for a long time coming. "I always thought that this band was best experienced live," he recalled. "Like if I had a choice on how to present our songs and what we do to people who haven't heard us before, I'd tell them to just come and hear us play. I'd say, 'Come see these sweaty men play their songs,'" he said as he laughed. The decision to try out this new process ended up being exactly what the band needed at that point in their career.

"I think a lot of recording is like staring at this visual representation of sound that you just made. You can actually visually see where you fucked up and chop that piece out," said Boeckner, in regards to their old way of making albums. "You can get very obsessed and it puts you in a psychological mindset of just nitpicking constantly, searching for perfection at the expense of the songs." For Wolf Parade, the kinetic energy behind their live performance, as well as the organic creativity of songwriting were far more valuable to them than a polished studio sound; they wanted Expo 86 to show the band as raw and natural as can be. Through and through, the creation of their latest album was a physically and mentally liberating experience. And many of the songs reflect this newfound freedom.

From start to finish, Expo 86 has a freshness and urgency to it, marked by some straightforward lyricism, gelled cohesiveness, and the intimacy, intensity and sheer loudness of a Wolf Parade show. Much like on their previous two albums, both lyricists Krug and Boeckner lean towards the darker ends of the subject spectrum: loss, separation, fears. On Boeckner's song, "Palm Road," he sings about the apocalyptic end-of-the-world dreams that he had had while staying at his father-in-law's house that sat right smack in the middle of a desert in Aruba. "On the surface it [Aruba] sounds wonderful, but living there, and spending a lot of time outdoors, not surrounded by people or a big city eventually gave me nightmares." On another track, "Little Golden Age," he wrestles with the memories of the great summer before graduating high school — rife with punk rock anthems and "getting loaded in municipal parks" — and how many of those old friends still hold on tightly to that time of their lives, while he, much to his own confusion and guilt, does not, despite the fact that he's since lost a lot of those close companions. 

In going along with the band's new mantra of being as true to form as possible, Boeckner took the road less traveled and often penned lyrics that were straight to the point, letting go of his past tendencies of being flowery, and putting down his usual compadre, figurative language, much like a worm shedding its cocoon. Once again, the band has found a new kind of release: the liberated lyricist. In this same song, he asks bluntly his favorite line on the entire album, "I don't miss my little golden age/ You can't go back / And who would want to anyway?" He reveals that it's weird to write so concretely, especially since many songwriters, like himself in the past, generally "want to impress people with their wordplay" and "want to project to others that they're intelligent." But ultimately, he believes the best way of honoring that summer was to be open and honest about it. "The song was about something that really affected me emotionally and I felt like if I shrouded it in metaphor, it wouldn't do the memory of it justice."

Even with all sadnesses aside, Wolf Parade aren't afraid of being playful with their honesty. Between many of the song titles and even the album title Expo 86 is a pandora's box of inside jokes. "We think that when it's the four of us in a room, we generally think we are hilarious," Boeckner admitted with a grin. The band chose the title based on the 1986 World's Fair in Canada, believing that they all had attended it at the same time and quite possibly, but unknowingly, crossed paths. Showing a little bit of the group's silliness, he explained that they could have actually "all met as children in front of the Swedish Pavilion or something and agreed to start a band later."

One step further in the art of openness, Boeckner, looking to quell any misgivings about his personality, divulged a juicy tidbit about himself: he's a total nerd. "Maybe I'm just taking this from the amorphous that is the internet," he said chuckling, "but I think that most fans see Spencer as the introverted, sensitive singer-songwriter and me as the hard-drinking, rocker dude." He went on to describe the kinds of books that he eats up on a daily basis. One in particular that he can't seem to put down is Vasily Grossman's novel Life and Fate, a harrowing fictional account of World War II. He was drawn to it because of the explicit anger and sadness of the writing, and before launching into a deeper summary of it and the viciousness of the Russian economy and government at that time, he concedes with a short pause and laugh, saying, "Yep. I'm a nerd."