Wolf Parade at Coachella, April 2006
GE T MORE EXPLORE THE MANY SIDE PROJECTS OF THE WOLF PARADE GU YS AT SPIN.COM/ WOLFPARADE
trading off sections as a rejoinder to all who’ve accused Wolf Parade of sounding like two different bands fighting for space on the same album. As for how this will be received, the band’s general aversion to common technology isn’t just endearing—Thompson is bewildered to learn that he can watch Mighty Boosh clips on his iPod—but shelters them from catty anonymous online criticisms.
“It does often feel like a battle and not a communal enjoyment of music,” Krug says. “I could be like, ‘Look,
I made you these songs!’ and people could say, ‘Oh, that one I don’t love very much, but thanks for making it!’ Instead, they get angry and take offense if they don’t like it.”
At least one key fan seems pleased with what he’s heard. “I can’t think of another band on our roster that defines what’s happening in indie music more than Wolf Parade,” says Jonathan Poneman, president of Sub Pop Records, which signed them after initially showing interest in Boeckner’s previous band, the Victoria-based Atlas Strategic. “Whereas there are an infinite number of good bands out there, there’s something so readily identifiable and seemingly effortless about them.”
Krug admits to being wary about how Sub Pop chooses to market the band, while Boeckner is less so, a difference of opinion that has, in the past, anyway, caused some friction. “Maybe it’s from growing up in a small town and watching Sonic Youth play Letterman, but if you can get a public forum for an art project as fucking weird as Wolf Parade, then some kid in the middle of nowhere who isn’t checking the cool blogs sees it,” says Boeckner. “And he thinks, ‘ Wow, these idiots are just like me and my friends. I could do this.’ That makes me happy.”
Side projects: Boeckner and Perry as Handsome Furs; Krug with Sunset Rubdown
“If we put all the other projects on hold and tried to incorporate those ideas and energies into Wolf Parade, we’d self-destruct,” Boeckner says, sipping a coffee in the back of Café Olympico, an Italian coffee shop that’s a hub of sorts for the Mile End scene. “If we were to tour as much as Handsome Furs do, we’d kill each other. I feel like there was a point after Apologies came out where we could have closed ranks and operated like a normal band, but I don’t think it’s in any of us to do that.”
When Wolf Parade did find windows for reconvening last year, their first decision was to jettison all songs left over from the past few years and start fresh; and rather than hire Brock or some other big name, they entrusted Thompson, who oversaw Plague Park, with the production and arrangements.
“I think the main thing that fucks bands up is trying to appeal to an imagined audience, reaching for that ‘next level,’” Boeckner says. “If your first record is well received, then your second will be a slightly better produced version of that; maybe you’ll hire the guy who did the Flaming Lips. Trying to guess what parts people like and then streamlining them—that’s not growth, that’s a marketing strategy.”
In the tradition of Abbey Road, Music From Big Pink, and Electric Ladyland, At Mount Zoomer is named for its birthplace. The sparsely decorated second-floor apartment in Mile End once inhabited by Win Butler and Régine Chassagne— ARCADE FIRE and WIN AND REGINE 2003 are scrawled, adorably, in the sidewalk outside the front door—is Wolf Parade’s studio and general headquarters. (“Mt. Zoomer” is a near-anagram of “Matt Moroz,” who does the band’s cover art. Though Bakara prides himself on his anagram-crafting talent, he admits he took liberties in part because “zoomer” is a B.C. term for ’shrooms. For the record, a pretty good one for Wolf Parade is “a dwarf pole.”)
To Boeckner’s relief, Zoomer is no glossy retread; in particular, its nearly 11-min- ute finale, “Kissing the Beehive,” feels like a leap forward, with Krug and Boeckner
THOUGH “THE MACHINE,” as each member of Wolf Parade casually refers to their label at one point or another (as if the home to Pissed Jeans, Tad, and the Fastbacks were somehow Sony BMG), is beginning in earnest the process of reintroducing the world to Wolf Parade, the band itself is not particularly active at the moment. The album has been finished since March, and their first show isn’t until July. While Krug rehearses with Sunset Rubdown for their first European tour, Bakara, Thompson, and Boeckner navigate a wobbly lazy Susan inside a brightly lit Szechuan restaurant in Chinatown, sharing willowy beef with tiny, black, bizarrely tongue-numbing flower peppers that Boeckner describes as “mildly narcotic.” There’s also a round of Tsingtaos and a dish called edible fungus, which could stand some serious rebranding.
“It’s a funky aperitif!” says Bakara.
“It’s a clitoris mushroom,” offers Boeckner.
Bakara suggests we try to get high off the flower peppers submerged along the bottom of the willowy beef platter, but no one, thankfully, takes the bait. He has just seen the Ian Curtis biopic Control and theorizes that the late Joy Division singer may be the true patron saint of modern indie rock; martyring himself because he couldn’t decide between two women is the dramatic but ultimately pointless gesture that many bands emulate in spirit by “singing soulfully about nothing.”
“Sexless, totally neutered escapism,” Boeckner huffs. “I always thought there should be something vigorous and dissonant and shitty that makes songs worth listening to over and over.”
Bakara answers his cell phone—he owns one—and it’s their A&R rep at Sub Pop. He talks for a few minutes, then puts the phone away.
“The album leaked,” he sighs. “Bound to happen. But people seem to like it!”
“And how many months before it comes out?” asks Boeckner. “Two months? Fuck. Can’t we just put it up on i Tunes or something?”
They’re openly frustrated by Sub Pop’s old-timey insistence on a long run-up to At Mount Zoomer’s release, yet the NIN/Raconteurs/Radiohead instant-gratification model seems an equally frustrating alternative in that it rewards institutionalized impatience. And they’ve benefited from this online attention as much as they struggle with it.
“The weird experience of this band,” says Bakara, “is that the Internet made us before we had a record. It was more difficult then, because the expectations were predicated on nothing.”
“We have this culture of immediacy,” says Boeckner. “People are into getting shit first, and then it comes out and it’s not as good as they thought it’d be. How could it?” He gets the leftover willowy beef and its attendant death-peppers wrapped up for his wife. “It’s not like I’m not proud of it, but at the end of the day, it’s just a fucking rock record. You know?”
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