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| A suitably transported Dan Boeckner |
Wolf Parade are spoilt for choice. Twin vocalists / scribes Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner, have more talent in their respective scrawny behinds than many an established indie act. Their boundless creativity and diverse styles merged to wonderful effect with 2005's Apologies to the Queen Mary, an album of stormy passion and chaos, that I felt teetered on just the right side of self implosion. Rocking with a wide eyed neurotic din, this was a band that made you feel alive.
I am for some reason reminded of the first time I heard At The Dive In's Relationship Of Command when I think about this record. There is something about Krug's wounded yelp that reminds me of Omar Rodriguez's tonsil tearing ululations. See 'Fancy Claps' for the closest resemblance. Moreover, while both bands are influenced by punk rock, it's the burning sense of urgency that most links these diverse acts. Both, also, I felt, moved towards more proggy methods to their detriment.The taut, limber At The Drive In, became the over baked, OTT and only sporadically brilliant, Mars Volta. Whilst Wolf Parade, too, seemed to have fallen prey to the same proggy lures in later work (but more on this later).
At their best both bands made the kind of sound which slaps you across the face and shouted "Wake Up and LIVE". Apologies is a cathartic racket and an album that's been a go to for me ever since it came out. Superior, I feel, to Arcade Fire's epic rock opus Funeral. It's like that album's deviant punk rock black sheep brother. Where Win Butler would put in an orchestra to simulate grandness, Messrs Krug and Boeckner would throw in more distortion, or oblique lyrics. Yet there is a definite link between the two acts. Compare I'll Believe In Anything to Wake Up, for two BIG songs on the same theme. That theme being, like, love, death, everything....man. But handled in such an unchessy, moving way.
Anyway, Apologies is almost ridiculously consistent, as is their playing - I had a live rip (naughty naughty, I know) for the first six months before I actually bought a physical copy, and I didn't notice it was live all that time. They must rock live. And to anyone who's seen them - you're a bastard- especially as I may never have the chance to see them now they're on an indefinite hiatus.
Anyway, the music is so immediate in a kind of teenage way - tackling big questions, treating subjective emotions as if they are 'the world'- that I actually prefer these live versions to their studio counterparts. Their rawness befits the songs, and their mercurial take on reality. It was a truly awesome record that all fans of rock or guitar based music should own.
2005, however, was a long time ago, and as intriguing the various offshoots of Wolf Parade have been, I still yearned for the heartfelt energy of their first record, yet felt, deep down, that it could never be recreated.I was somewhat disillusioned by the shapeless At Mount Zoomer, and as such was remiss enough to not check out last year's Expo 86. I missed out.
Linked below is the song Yulia; a dead ringer (musically) for the fist pumping, Springsteen aping "This Heart's On Fire" from Apologies... This tune made me reconsider the album as a whole. Ostensibly about a failed Soviet attempt to beat the US to the moon, it reads as a postcard from the death doomed astronaut to his lover back on Earth.
'I'm twenty million miles from a comfortable home / And space is very cold / Yulia"
The finale is very moving too, with its repeated screams of "there's nothing out here, nothing out here, nothing out here." It's a plea for something in a world of nothing. The kind of space age tragedy that Shakespeare would gravitate to if writing today.
So, I figured, an album with songs of this quality can't be that bad, can it? And no it's not. Still less immediate than Apologies.. it was largely recorded live in studio, and is a visceral affirmation of everything rock and roll should be: passionate, clever, and fucking loud.
Expo 86 - 'Ghost Pressure', 'Yulia', 'Little Golden Age', 'In The Direction Of The Moon..'
Apologies To The Queen Mary - like, the whole fuckin' thing, man. But especially 'This Heart's on Fire', 'I'll Believe In Anything', 'Fancy Claps' and 'The Curse'.
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