There is something in my DNA that makes me severely susceptible to songs getting stuck in my head. These are sometimes called “earworms” and can happen from a song you absolutely love or absolutely despise (ie, Limp Bizkit’s “Nookie”). Back in 2005, I heard a song that I still find myself randomly singing to myself. That song was the “I’ll Believe in Everything” from Wolf Parade’s 2005 debut album “Apologizes to The Queen Mother”, a swelling powerful explosion of sound, listening to it still leaves me absolutely stunned and rocked to the core.
Their music takes a few listens to take hold of you. I have found something needs to click inside me and all of a sudden, I can literally listen to songs on a straight loop. Is this healthy? Probably not, but I dare you to watch the “I’ll Believe In Anything” video, one of my favorites of all time, full of Elizabethan duals (the real man’s sport). It bothers me to no end that Justin Beiber can get billions of views on youtube and a video and song as brilliant as this hovers around 500,000.
Their sophomore album in 2008, “At Mount Zoomer” failed to impress for the most part, lacking a lot of the rare power of their first album. With their new album “Expo 86″, Wolf Parade proves to me that the greatness of “I’ll Believe in Everything” was not a fluke.
After a few listens, I have yet to find a song that instantly grabs at me like my previous love, but one thing is sure, the full cacophony of electric sound makes an experience much more in this outing. It definitely feels like Wolf Parade is starting to come into their own and find their Wolf Parade sound (which is surprisingly close to how an actual parade of wolves would sound, if that parade included a marching band of wolves that new how to make great sounding alternative music).
This is one of those albums that needs multiple listens just to start to hear all the little touches that the band puts in the interplay between the instruments alone, something that takes a level of talent that is often absent in most modern rock. If it seems like I am spending a lot of time talking about how the band crafts their sound, it is because it is evident it is something they must slave over.
Stand-outs include “Ghost Pressure” , “What Did My Lover Say”, and “Oh You, Old Thing” but time will tell whether the album stays with me. I can recommend a listen to anyone who likes thickly-layerd raw alternative such as Arcade Fire (friends/collaborators of Wolf Parade) or LCD Soundsystem.
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