Wolf Parade At Mount Zoomer by: Thomas Mendelovits Tue:15-Jul-08 Label: Sub Pop Year: 2008 WB rating 73 out of 100

Better to get this out in the open first. I can’t listen to Wolf Parade’s best song, ‘I’ll Believe in Anything’. It’s too good. In fact, it’s so intense that, if I mistakenly hear the opening stunted synth lines, I cannot but listen to the entire song, fully engaged, unmoving. ‘Idiot Wind’ is the same, but hyperbole aside, there really aren’t too many songs in this sacred pop pantheon. And it’s not just me. My ex-girlfriend felt the same about this song and it seems that plenty of people on YouTube and MySpace do too. A couple of other songs (‘Grounds for Divorce’, ‘Shine A Light’) on the band’s 2005 debut Apologies to the Queen Mary were similarly devastating but in ‘I’ll Believe in Anything’ Wolf Parade have a perfect song. Such baggage warms the welcome for the Montreal band’s follow-up, At Mount Zoomer, but sadly, there is no perfection here – only intimations of greatness.

This time round, the songs just aren’t here. The two (basically indistinguishable) lead dudes from Wolf Parade (the blessedly named Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner) have been kept busy with their side-projects (Sunset Rubdown for Krug and Handsome Furs for Boeckner) and you can’t help but wonder whether their finer songs have been siphoned off into their more solo-focused outfits. Sunset Rubdown’s debut album of last year, Random Spirit Lover, was certainly not a record of Wolf Parade B-Sides. Indeed the songs were arguably better than the ones he offers on Zoomer. Wolf Parade are, after all, merely a ragtag band of often elsewhere-engaged musos who spontaneously formed after being asked to play support for the Arcade Fire. Despite this though, on Apologies, we got a singularly minded band backing awesome songs from two somehow-unified songwriters. It was raw, it was fresh and it was definitely powerful stuff.

On Zoomer, they may have built on the internal dynamics of their fine band, but the passion is more implied than realised. The songs are great indie-prog-rock but they don’t mean much. The album’s most solemn moment, the ten-minute faux-epic ‘Kissing the Beehive’ hardly comes off as such: “as if you didn’t know that it would sting/kissing the beehive/and fucking up your fingers/from pushing on the ring”. Throughout the record there are many such moments, songs and lyrics hinting at something grandly emotive, but staying only mediocre.

Winningly, Wolf Parade are still a fine rock ‘n’roll unit. At Mount Zoomer proves them to be one of the better and more avant-garde of contemporary indie-rock bands. Their use of synthesisers could only be described as ‘futuristic’ when considering the instrument’s more common retro usage. However, at the same time as antiquated analogue keyboards are a bedrock of their sound, there is also a classic crunchy guitar-riff driven element to many of Zoomer’s songs. ‘Soldier’s Grin’ has hooks aplenty, with motifs coming, intertwining, going and finally returning to anchor a heart-swelling, quickened finale. The very prog, but also very indie, transcendental change finds glorious expression on ‘Language City’, with a stomping piano and MicroKorg middle-section transforming the song into something completely different to its first two minutes. These instrumental breakdowns are the strongest element of the record. On the finest tracks everything works so efficiently that the moniker fits. The quintet of two keyboardists, two guitarists and one drummer really do come across as a Wolf Parade – lean, mean and wild, but also working together in synchrony.

There’s something about Bruce. The Boss has always been something of a hot stock and, these days, indie-rock’s finest purveyors Arcade Fire, most commercial entity The Killers and now Wolf Parade have found relevance in his down-home melodrama. His imprint is found all over ‘Language City’ and ‘The Grey Estates’ especially, with its opening lines: “darling please lets get out of here on a train to who knows where”. Springsteen is a strange model for a band that mostly succeeds in transcending their influences and it may be a reflection of the pall coating At Mount Zoomer generally. Compared to their brilliant debut, nothing is as urgent on this record. It’s that old chestnut again: if any other band were to debut with this record, they would for sure score higher than a paltry 73. But Wolf Parade aren’t any other band. Moments of their former greatness are present on At Mount Zoomer, but it will be a bit of a climb before they again ascend to Apologies’ heights.