Wolf Parade - EP 4
Tiny Mix Tapes 70
Wolf Parade
EP 4
[Wolf Parade Productions; 2016]
Rating: 3.5/5
“Is that a cardboard wolf?”
“Gonna give it to Spencer during the encores.”
“Stupid. Love it.”
“What do you think of the new EP?”
“I like it. I like the songs. Four good songs.”
“They feel small though, right?”
“Shorter songs, yeah.”
“Right. Brief. Not for lack of inspiration, probably; these guys dribble hooks. And the smallness makes EP 4 sound like EP 4 and not Mount Zoomer 2. But these songs can feel kinda slight, right? Compared to, like, the Rushmorey highs Spencer and Dan have jumped off of.”
“Songwriting isn’t suicide.”
“Right and—”
“Wolf Parade is more than those two guys.”
“—that’s why there’s none of those slurpy reunion vibes hanging around. EP 4 is a couple debilitatingly inspired dudes re-realizing that they can collide a few recent separate intentions into a new arc (that’s probably long-term unstable). It feels like an acknowledgment of process, of needing to open familiar lines of communication to find new shit. But also, yeah, admissions of intention and process aren’t the same as aspiration and peak-reaching.”
“It’s a shootaround.”
“What?”
“Before the game. It’s four (!) guys running old plays, clowning, showboating but also flexing and stretching and envisioning what they could do with the ball when it’s game-time.”
“Yeah, but it’s not practice because it’s the thing, right? It’s the artifact. And we don’t know for sure that this is the before-the-game thing because maybe it’s actually the game thing? Also, it’s songs, not sports—”
“—or yeah, it’s game-time but the game is Around the World. Sure, it feels a little like an exercise, maybe less grand, and there’s no halftime. It’s not an Event, but it’s all individuals in a unit developing personal languages of consistency and accuracy and focus, and when you step back, you have this thing—”
“SONGS NOT SPORTS. Your metaphors are trash, talk about the songs.”
“Don’t they all tackle attachment, the way we tie ourselves to arts and loves and lives? There’s ‘Automatic,’ imagines the love emotion as auto-machinating (‘love is easy when it’s all you do’), supposing that romantic attachment is sort of fundamentally exciting and hopeless. I mean, yikes, our guy ‘sings from the nowhere room’ and then ‘calls out for some connection.’ I can’t follow the specific narrative turns of ‘Mr. Startup,’ but there’s this personality unraveling, some guy named Danny withdrawing from the world he’s good at so he can chase something else that’s probably inane and bad for him. It’s retreat from the familiar because that doesn’t feel like a fit. Renounce your talents: ‘blessed be the ones who let their blessings go.’ There’s a literal attachment in ‘C’est La Vie Way,’ two people getting married, one promising he’ll ‘try to be a decent partner, try to keep the teardrops off your face/ be kind enough to regard you in your c’est la vie way.’ But I don’t think the couple has a good dialogue, right, because it’s missed communications, ‘like if there’s a Russian doll inside another Russian doll.’ And there’s only one chorus, really, before the song veers into Roy Orbison aria, splits into a breakdown, and the wedding’s off because, hey, c’est la vie is the point. And the closure is, what, a ‘Floating World,’ where our narrator throws up hands and flies off, ‘lost in the floating world beyond this one.’ EP 4 is super cohesive, conscious of what unions and dialogues are and what it means to re-union yourself with something.”
“If Wolf Parade is the ex we’re thinking of getting back with, these songs broadcast major commitment issues, yeah?”
“You can’t just pick it back up. Commitment’s lame, anyway. We’ll nod politely when they play the new songs and wreck the place when they play ‘I’ll Believe in Anything,’ but it’s not 2005 and barfy nostalgia isn’t good for the band and it’s worse for us.”
“Gonna be a sick show, isn’t it?”
“Was then. Is now.”
01. Automatic
02. Mr. Startup
03. C’est La Vie Way
04. Floating World
Pitchfork 70
In a literal sense, Apologies to the Queen Mary has become 2005’s most essential record; shorthand for a set of qualities that defined a year considered to be indie rock’s artistic and cultural zenith. If you’ve been nostalgic for those times—and it seems like plenty are—it’s easier than ever to empathize with an already wearied Dan Boeckner when he slurs his first words on Wolf Parade’s debut LP: “I’m not in love with the modern world.” And yet, the hyperspeed production, distribution, consumption and coverage of music allows Wolf Parade to make a comprehensive “triumphant comeback” despite only taking six years off. Hell, even the release strategy of EP 4 is similar to the one used by the stars: the short-lead, quick drop of highly-anticipated material.
EP 4 is no “appointment listening", though. Its 12 minutes of new material almost immediately got overshadowed by Chance the Rapper, Brand New, new Ariana Grande singles and whatever Kanye got himself into last week. This likely worked in favor of Wolf Parade, since EP 4 feels ancillary to their return rather than the focus. This isn’t the sound of Wolf Parade asserting themselves. It’s Wolf Parade reintroducing themselves to each other after Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner built massive catalogs that now makes their original band a supergroup in reverse.
Wolf Parade had originally promised something with a “heavy glam vibe,” suggested Krug was taking the spiritual lead here—in all aspects, vocally, sartorially, lyrically, he’s the theatre kid in Wolf Parade and, moreover, his songs are the ones that work best with crowd participation. Turns out those reference points were simply meant to signify a leaner, more trebly and immediate version of Wolf Parade, scaling back on the thick, proggy arrangements that defined the lesser-loved At Mount Zoomer and Expo 86.
It’s much easier for Krug to find his “Wolf Parade mode”: he simply has to be more reined in than Sunset Rubdown, Moonface or Swan Lake, which means writing songs that are about three minutes instead of six—“Mr. Startup” and “C’est La Vie Way” are satisfying, jittery New Wave that could’ve just as easily been attributed to Boeckner. The streamlined, aerodynamic sound of EP 4 has much more in common with Boeckner' work in Operators, Handsome Furs, and Divine Fits.
Enjoyable as it is, EP 4 does seem like smart risk management, a test run that confirms that whatever the group comes up with won’t be a Pixies-style disaster. As such, the rewards are modest: “Floating World” pleasantly hovers, never aspiring to the moon launch of “Yulia.” The frenzied midsection of “C’est La Vie Way” recalls “Fancy Claps”, but only briefly before pulling back. The most instantly lovable parts are the “2005!” sonic easter eggs: the second verse of “Mr. Startup” works the hi-hat on the 2 and 4, which defined the sound of mid-2k indie rock almost as much as the word “angular.”
But EP 4 is missing the friction between Krug and Boeckner that allowed Apologies to the Queen Mary to instantly combust within Isaac Brock’s compressed production: the cadences, mannerisms and subject matter between the two frontmen are almost indistinguishable here. More likely, it’s the general sense of yearning that has yet to be rediscovered, the ambition to transcend something that defined not only Apologies to the Queen Mary but many of its celebrated peers in the Class of 2005. Maybe that will come in time: even if Wolf Parade aren’t in love with the modern world, they’re learning to live in it.
Fri May 27 00:00:00 GMT 2016