The New Music

Wolf Parade Expo 86 [Sub Pop]

Need to know: One of the bands at the forefront of the great mid-00 Montreal music scene explosion, Wolf Parade were kind of the yin to Arcade Fire’s yang or vice versa. Instead of cathartic anthems that crashed into orchestral crescendos, Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug’s songs came with a divisive force that alternated between the former’s muscular, guitar-based, Springsteen-y flares and the latter’s more Bowie-ish, spaced-out, organ oddities. Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock not only took them on tour, but also acted as A&R man in signing them to Sub Pop in 2004. Debut album Apologies to the Queen Mary (produced by Brock) lived up to they hype and earned them a Polaris Music Prize nod. Boeckner went on to form Handsome Furs with his wife, and Krug ran amok in his spare time working in side-projects like Frog Eyes, Swan Lake, Moonface and Sunset Rubdown, which in fairness is as much a day job as Wolf Parade has ever been. A second album, 2008’s Mount Zoomer completely flew under the radar upon release. Expo 86 is their third album and first without synth manipulator and noise trickmaker Hadji Bakara.

In a few words: The lacklustre response to their last album somewhat dampens the excitement that should come with a new Wolf Parade album. But Expo 86 (named after the World’s Fair in which each member attended separately back in 1986) brings a cohesion that has never been there before, closing the divide between the songwriting styles of Boeckner and Krug. Unfortunately, that spark we’ve come to expect from this beloved band isn’t quite as strong as it was on Queen Mary, but no longer are the two songwriters defined by the divisive sounds of a strapping guitar chord or a cavorting organ, the best example of which can be heard on Krug’s riff rampant “Cave-o-sapien.” Still, Wolf Parade live up to their end of the bargain - Boeckner delivers the anthems like “Little Golden Age” and “Yulia,” and Krug gets manic with “Cloud Shadow On The Mountain” and the surprisingly disco-punk-ish pulse of “What Did My Love Say? (It Always Had To Go This Way)” – leaving us with an album that falls somewhere between the mesmeric rush of their debut and the disappointment of their underwhelming second effort.

Best track: “Little Golden Age”

R.I.Y.L. Handsome Furs, Sunset Rubdown, Frog Eyes, Modest Mouse,

Rating: 8/10

Buy, download, steal or don’t bother: The album cover’s radness demands a vinyl purchase, just so that photo can be at its maximum size.

Sample: “What Did My Love Say? (It Always Had To Go This Way)”

Website: www.myspace.com/wolfparade

You can listen to Expo 86 in its entirety by clicking here.