(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Montreal-based Wolf Parade is the band of
singer-songwriters Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug.
Boasting two keyboards, they revised
Arcade Fire's
electro-pop
intuitions
and Modest Mouse's post-pop approach
using a more encyclopedic palette.
The first EPs yielded bouncy and crunchy ditties such as
You Are A Runner (limping rhythm, psychotic vocals)
and Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts,
that were also included on their first album,
Apologies To The Queen Mary (Sub Pop, 2005).
Both the old and the new songs straddled stylistic border without ever
falling clearly into one category or another.
Modern World, propelled by liquidi piano, is an odd power ballad.
Grounds for Divorce is catchy enough to be a pop hit but it is also
too clownish to be one. It's A Curse is a quirky dance tune.
Shine a Light borrows the rhythm from the Velvet Underground but the synth-line and the melody could be from a synth-pop ditty.
The melodramatic ballads Same Ghost Every Night and Dinner Bells
seem to make fun of the cliches of emotional rock (David Bowie without the make-up).
Fancy Claps is the most futuristic moment, sort of Devo for the emo generation.
The music is as eclectic as passionate, denying the dichotomy between brainy
structure and emotional impact.
The Handsome Furs, formed by Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade and his keyboardist
wife Alexei Perry, debuted
with the sparsely arranged Plague Park (2007), an album that used
the drum-machine instead of the drums and managed to create an almost
gothic atmosphere, and then uses it to sing blue-collar elegies.
The Handsome Furs' Face Control (2009) contains I'm Confused
and All We Want Baby Is Everything, frequently sounding like New
Order or Human League: philosophical synth-pop.
Spencer Krug launched a side project, Sunset Rubdown, with
Snake's Got a Leg (2005), de facto a solo album,
and worked in Swan Lake with
Dan Bejar of the Destroyer and Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes, debuting on
Beast Moans (2006), a pretentious work that evoked the noise-pop of lo-fi rockers
Polvo.
Spencer Krug's Sunset Rubdown released a more mature album,
Shut Up I Am Dreaming (2006), containing
The Empty Threats of Little Lord,
the lengthy The Men Are Called Horsemen There
and especially
I'm Sorry I Sang on Your Hands that Have Been in the Grave.
While still hampered by the self-indulgence of bedroom-rock, the album had
moments of real eccentric grandeur.
Wolf Parade would have been darlings of the new wave with albums such as
At Mount Zoomer (Subpop, 2008).
Dan Boeckner's guitar (slightly atonal, then repetitive, then droning and
anthemic and finally
Neil Young-ianly distorted in the limping
Soldier's Gun, against a folk-ish wall of sound created by the
keyboards and flute)
and Spencer Krug's keyboards (mining gospel and minimalist cliches to fuel
the propulsive California Dreamer against dreamy guitar twang,
or weaving post-twist tapestries for the feverish, Elvis Costello-ian The Grey Estates)
can work wonders even with mediocre melodic material.
The spare, surreal An Animal In Your Care
and the cabaret-paced Call It Ritual
find a middle ground between radio-friendly and intellectual-friendly; while
the electronic arrangements and danceable beat of Language City
(a rootsy version of the Cars)
and the slow ska-tinged Fine Young Cannibals
flirt with the mainstream ballad.
The eleven-minute melodrama Kissing the Beehive (including a three-minute
instrumental coda of dance music)
stretches the talents of the duo a bit too thin, but they remain
two of the greatest pop wizards of the decade.
In the meantime, Sunset Rubdown had become more than just a side project.
Random Spirit Lover (2007) excels both at
acid pop ditties such as The Mending of the Gown and
For the Pier, and
surreal constructs a` la Syd Barrett such as Magic Vs Midas.
Typical of the contradictions of his method is the
abrasive and limping rigmarole of The Courtesan Has Sung.
The most eccentric moment might be
Up on Your Leopard Upon the End of Your Feral Days, a psychotic chant
against a backdrop of deranged amusement-park melodies and marching rhythms,
followed by the equally sloppy and vaudevillian Stallion.
On both one can detect the indirect influence of Syd Barrett.
Trumpet Trumpet Toot Toot is pure folly: rhythm, vocals, arrangement,
electronics all out of control.
In a sense, The Taming of the Hands that Came Back to Life is too
serious for this album and sounds a bit out of context.
This album did more to establish Spencer Krug as a major composer than any of
the Wolf Parade albums.
Sunset Rubdown's
Dragonslayer (Jagjaguwar, 2009) featured a new member, Marc Nicol (bass, drums, kalimba).
The sound is
streamlined and solemny melodic for Silver Moons
(reminiscent of Warren Zevon)
and for the folkish Nightingale, and robust
throughout, particularly
the loud guitar and stuammering rhythm of Idiot Heart
(with some David Bowie-esque overtones).
You Go on Ahead is even too "normal" by his standards, sounding like
Krug is trying a bit too hard to find the chorus/bridge that will catapult
him out of the underground.
However, there are still plenty of eccentric touches, starting with the
neurotic, tribal, distorted seven-minute shuffle of Black Swan.
And, no matter how convoluted and disfigured the song structure,
catchy refrains surface from every corner of Krug's soundscape.
The biggest disappointment comes with the ten-minute closer,
Dragon's Lair, a rather sparse song given its duration, that does little
to endear itself other than talk too much.
Furthermore, Swan Lake had returned with Enemy Mine (2009), that
contains Mercer's Spanish Gold 2044 and Krug's Paper Lace.
Handsome Furs fully converted to trivial synth-pop on
Sound Kapital (2011), dominated by
Alexei Perry's electronic keyboards (What About Us).
Abandoning the progressive pretenses of At Mount Zoomer,
Wolf Parade's Expo 86 (Sub Pop, 2010) was a straightforward collection
of sings, mostly energetic and occasionally poppy,
but it should have been just an EP, or maybe just a single with
What Did My Lover Say.
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