Expo 86
Album | Wolf Parade
Montreal supergroup reconvenes, shifts direction.
Since 2008's rather disappointing At Mount Zoomer, Wolf Parade's co-leaders Spencer Krug (with Sunset Rubdown) and Dan Boeckner (with Handsome Furs) have both released side projects better than anything their putative main gig has yet turned out. (Yes, including 2005 blog fave Apologies To The Queen Mary.) They've chosen an interesting way out of that problem: both of Wolf Parade's previous albums exhibited a certain stylistic bifurcation between Krug's aggressive artiness and Boeckner's poppier tendencies, but on Expo 86, the two songwriters have created a new third path that suits both their strengths. As before, the songwriting and vocals are evenly split between the pair, but these 11 songs sound like one cohesive band rather than two singer-songwriters acting as each other's backing group. As a result, Boeckner's "Palm Road" is a straightforward power pop tune that happens to be built on a hypnotically weird drum pattern, and Krug's "What Did My Lover Say? (It Always Had To Go This Way)" sets his typically oblique, discursive lyrics to the most bracing riff-rock Wolf Parade has so far attempted. The indier-than-thou crowd might lament Wolf Parade's more immediately accessible new direction, but it suits them.
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