Wolf Parade - EXPO 86

About a year ago I wrote this pretentious post about how I was so excited to hear the new Wolf Parade album, EXPO 86. Bad ass as they are, I got around to the album, wrote a long-winded review of it here and never came back to share how I felt about it. I’ve gotta be honest in that although I heard it many times, something always felt a bit empty about it for me. I always maintained that it had to be the fact that I never got around to buying a physical copy of it on vinyl or CD because the quality was not up to par. And still, I felt stupid because they’re definitely one of the better bands out there and I couldn’t find time to buy a vinyl copy in all of 2010? I’m terrible I know but come on. But now, I’ve gotten down to the heart of the album with a copy that is rich and pretty gorgeous.

The guitar and synths on “In the Direction of the Moon” are such a driving force that they shake and rattle the song with a defining presence. It’s the same menacing melody over and over; traded between different instruments that get’s passed around through a swirling mist of noise. It’s this massive, very nearly six-minute long, song that pummels with a relentless drive and the entire time, you can’t get enough of that singular melody. The best thing about Wolf Parade is that Spencer Krug’s styles go so well with the more muscular stuff Boeckner creates. On this song Krug delivers climactic lines with the help of soaring lines and raucous thumps of drums. These songs sound so epic, so HUGE, and still, lines like “I - I'm a wall of sand and stone. And you - you're some kind of ivy I'm trying to hold, as best I can.” are so bitterly personal.


So much so that when it trades into Dan Boeckner’s “Ghost Pressure,” you find yourself sort of still left with a missing feeling but by the time you hit the glorious chorus on this song, everything is downright seamless. If the wall on the previous song wasn’t enough, the nervy groove on this song is where it’s at. There’s times where everything slams away against a pounding drum before it all comes together on a blissful tremble of Boeckner singing “Little vision come shake me up…” I love the way they blend all of their styles onto a song that is merely part of a rather diverse entity. So even with each song sounding different from the rest, within the song there is so much territory covered that the band’s range is amazing. – Bryan