Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer - 2008

Yeah? I'd lost all interest in this band. It's on Sub Pop, right?

sub pop indeed.
check it out, on first impression - it might be better than the first one.

I'd lost all interest in this band.

me too but I totally loved the first one for like a month

I remember wondering how this last line from the pfork review was going to hold up:

In a few years, other folks will still remember where they were when they first heard Apologies to the Queen Mary.

apologies is one of my 3-5 favorite of the decade but first impressions on this is that it's kind of too even keel. nothing as wrecked as "you are my father" or "dear sons and daughters" and nothing flat out as good as "i'll believe in anything" or "ground for divorce"

i need to pay attention to/read lyrics though. and there are some nice new touches- scratchy almost post-punk guitar in some places and some really nice synth lines all over

'call it a ritual' was a questionable song to leak too

I totally have not paid attention to all the related albums that have come in between these two...should I have??

no

i like how they use the "Sparks" influence

i mean krug's lyrics are still way good in sunset rubdown i just like him backed by a straight up rock band way better than a kinda tinny band with cheap toy instruments

i haven't heard handsome furs though

"I totally loved the first one for like a month"

a month is a long time

yeah it was probably less

haha dude i actually figured you'd be waaaaay into wolf parade

I'd say that's pretty accurate, I give maybe a dozen "consensus" indie rock albums a real listen every year and end up not hating like a few of them, but Queen Mary was really good

The first one was a great record.

they have over 5.5 million scrobbles on last.fm!!!

is that like astronomical or am I just naive about the popularity of indie rock

i don't know, but they are better than the somewhat similiar sounding "arcade fire" imo.

apologies is one of my 3-5 favorite of the decade but first impressions on this is that it's kind of too even keel. nothing as wrecked as "you are my father" or "dear sons and daughters" and nothing flat out as good as "i'll believe in anything" or "ground for divorce"

You didn't even mention the best song from that disc! You know, the one with the video where the singer has two extra heads stacked on top of his and gets laughed at all over town. Hilarious!

i have no idea what a large amount of last.fm scrobbles are

Shine A Light! That's the one.

i can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not

I'm never sarcastic.

...

(I actually like that song a lot, J0rdan.)

yeah i think "shine a light" is good as well but as far as songs like that on the album go i prefer "this heart's on fire"

I feel the opposite way. I like all the songs you've mentioned, and I sense that they're well-loved by the group's fans (I read people praising them like crazy at the time), but I never thought they were in the same league as Shine A Light or You Are A Runner. . ..

from the new album: soldiers grin, california dreamer and kissing the beehive stands out as the best tracks at least in this early stage

I thought Apologies was an amazing album. Haven't heard the new one but I'm hoping for great things

im biased but you guys need to hear handsome furs.

1st listen - terrible disappointment, sounded like jammed out over weekend
...
...
...
5th listen - poss fave album of year so far. really strong from start to finish. one of those albums where something new grabs me each listen that I entirely missed before.

Jordan S love for sub-U2 "this heart's on fire" and lack of love for stand-out "dear sons and daughters" = black mark

Yeah, this has really grown on me too. Dan clearly owns the record though.

Any significant change in the sound from the debut?

Keyboard-ier. Looser, with longer tracks.

The approach to the songwriting is the biggest difference. the song from 'Apologies' that sounds most like the new record is "Dinner Bells", if that helps any.

roberto i love "dear sons and daughters", sorry if that wasn't clear

as for this album, i have seen anyone (here or elsewhere) bring up how much more confident they seem as musicians, between something like "call it a ritual" which isn't great but doesn't taper off into the warbled fuzz and static that it's kind of close cousin "you are a runner" does. and they couldn't have pulled off, nor would have attempted, a song like "fine young cannibals" two years ago, and even in the live versions of that the ending of the song is dan screaming a la "this heart's on fire" instead of the way it floats off on record. and the way the guitars are so clean. just more confidence all around, and it shows and it works imo.

i haven't*

sorry that makes no sense at points i just woke up

Yeah. Apologies never quite clicked with me the way everyone said that it should have, and At Mount Zoomer strikes me as a stronger and more confident record (and a solid entry point for me into the first one).

Zeno OTM about the best tracks, although I'd add Language City, or perhaps Bang the Drum. Kissing the Beehive is the clear highlight though, esp. the cathartic "FIRE IN THE HOLE!"s.

I'm not quite ready to proclaim this the year's strongest entry in indie rock (I'm the one person who's apparently fairly into Arm's Way), but it's close. Odd contrast: I seem to like the more polished version of Wolf Parade and find more interesting, while the more polished TPC has proven to have little staying power for me. Not sure why.

"mount zoomer" is an intersting piece of fun. like the missing link between arcade fire's "neon bible" and new pornographers' "mass romantic".

"this the year's strongest entry in indie rock "
that goes to The Dodos imo

The album is essentially clean, the sound is more mature, more balanced, more controlled. Its presented in Fine Young Cannibals, where the guitar sounds are so basic, so precise, so crystal clear, and yet so "Wolf Parade-esque" the band has reached a new point of self understanding and musical achievement, and on only their second album. The talent of this group really knows no end.

loved the first album, this one's nice but not quite there after a few listens. There's nothing on here that feels as anthemic as the best songs on Apologies ("I'll Believe in Anything", goddamnit) and the hooks don't catch me quite as hard on all the songs, though "Language City" is fantastic.

i'll probably like it more if I give it a bit more attention though. Apologies set the bar really high, I can't think of another "typical indie rock sounding" album from the past few years that's as strong or memorable.

it seems that Dan wrote (most of) the best songs on this album.

and yeah, the production is magnificent here, (thanks to Arlen Thompson)

my fave two songs on the record are Call It A Ritual and California Dreamer so I don't really agree with what a couple of folks have now said about Dan's songs being stronger, but i genuinely like every song on this record a lot, so it's like splitting hairs for me.

i was afraid that, wth so much other shit going on with side projects (esp with Spencer) there wasn't going to be much left for a new Wolf Parade so i'm doubly pleased this is so good, and doubly bummed that i hesitated over getting tix to see them tour it until they sold out.

Apologies was "omg fave" of 05 and I don't think I've listened to it since.

I'm definitely excited about hearing this though.

". Kissing the Beehive is the clear highlight though, esp. the cathartic "FIRE IN THE HOLE!"s."

the song, and esp. the second part with the "fire in the hole" hooks, is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. it got stuck to my brain for the last 2 days or so.

C'mon people, "Bang Your Drum" is clearly the best track here.

kissing the beehive

yeah like i said on the indie thread. i really like this and so much indie stuff days leaves me cold.

this has a certain knotty song structures, like it's not reinventing the wheel really, it is sorta in the spoon vein or whatever, but just the sense that so much indie rock seems like it's on auto-pilot nowadays whereas on this there's always some weird synth blurt or odd shambling rhythm hiccup that comes in and knocks the song off balance (and they are pretty good songs on the whole)

one of the dudes kinda reminds me of the interpol dude sometimes singingwise but tevs

a lot of times recently i sort of fucking want to smack bands when they use a lot of keyboards and stuff like that

they remind me of that little mike meyers smirk like "OH did you HEAR what i just said" after he tells a joke...like they are so fucking clever for grabbing some damn toy piano or glockenspiel or casio or something

but here all the synth shit works great, it almost makes it more murky...and they write actual good parts for them, reminds me of some weird hybrid of pere ubu's approach to keyboard and styx's

...and Sparks/roxy music/new porn

couldn't care less about this band :D

starting to think that 'fine young cannibals' is their best song ever

saw them last night in chi and it was really rowdy. new songs like "california dreamer" and "language city" ended up as real brawlers, "fine young cannibals" and ones like "grounds for divorce" were kinda dance-y. lots of moshing aggro dudes there. it was cool.

also i think they skipped the middle part of "kissing the beehive" and extended the outro kinda it was d-_-b

"also i think they skipped the middle part of "kissing the beehive""

i would like my money back !

i dont really know-- i haven't listened to that song all that much

they did the "fire in the hole!" part but it didn't seem like 11 mins long

i haven't properly got into this one yet - but the production sounds similar to that on the Neon Bible (not a good thing)

somewhere between neon bible and mass romantic i'd say

hmm...i don't get that at all, the sound quality of this seems way grittier less thin and digital than either of those

maybe it's a grittier less thin and digital version of those two (?!)

Thankfully it's NOT like 'Neon Bible'.

had a quick listen - on first or second listen there's nothing that grabs as much as on the first album but it's still pretty good, intellignet songwriting.

california dreamer is really really good - really understated and climatic.

Listening to this on repeat after not being especially impressed on first listen. It's suddenly grown amazing. There's a depth and a...harmonic sense? that was missing on the first album. I love it.

yeah this is totally ruling my world after a certain period of "meh". This could be my new "Pig Lib".

saw them last night in chi and it was really rowdy. new songs like "california dreamer" and "language city" ended up as real brawlers, "fine young cannibals" and ones like "grounds for divorce" were kinda dance-y. lots of moshing aggro dudes there. it was cool.

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, July 9, 2008 5:30 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark

this show was dope as fuck

i'm listening to this again right now, it still holds up really well, better than ppl give it credit for. boeckner's songs on here are way better than krug's i think, esp. "california dreamer" and 'fine young cannibals"

Having one of those "rediscovering an album I really love" moments with this, tbh.

Somehow it's been one of the albums from last year that I've returned to least often - like it doesn't occur to me to put it on very frequently. But the album popped up while I was shuffling through iTunes and folding laundry and I've been sitting down just listening to it for the past twenty minutes. California Dreamer is so fucking massive.

yeah i'm exactly the same way. the week it came out i took the cd with me on a road trip and listened to it on repeat for hours, partly because it was the only album i had brought with me but also because it's really uncatchy and you can't easily remember much of it. since then i've listened to it like four times tops. although it's obviously still great it's definitely hulla worse than apologies. judging by the the most recent sunset rubdown and handsome furs releases their next one should be pretty awesome.