By: Brad Horenstein (Right-Hear.com)
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WOLF PARADE is, in my opinion, the greatest band to ever come out of Montreal, Canada. And that takes into consideration ARCADE FIRE, who themselves are absolutely amazing and will no doubt stun the music community with the release of their upcoming album, “The Suburbs.” But WOLF PARADE also has a new album dropping this summer, “Expo 86,” and the early buzz surrounding the release suggests it’s gonna be a behemoth. Take, for instance, the record’s first single, “Ghost Pressure,” a sprawling epic drenched with catchy hooks, floods of instruments and an unavoidable wall of emotion that WOLF PARADE is best known for. The track has been making the indie blog rounds since being released a few weeks ago, and the buzz is building rapidly. All you have to do is listen to the song to understand why.
WOLF PARADE is a four-piece, but at its core lies two men: Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner. They are perhaps the greatest pair of vocalists of our young generation, which makes it all the more heart wrenching that they have not yet blown up. That’s likely just a matter of time, though. The music community is in the midst of a beach pop movement that may or may not last, but the music WOLF PARADE makes is the kind that will never fail to attract. It’s more reminiscent of bands like RUSH than THE BEACH BOYS, and each of its two singers have proved they can both run the helm of their own acts.
After releasing their debut album, “Apologies to the Queen Mary” in 2005, WOLF PARADE’s two lead singers, Krug and Boeckner, went on to form a string of solo side projects into which the two singers poured most of their creativity and attention for the last few of years. They did come back together to release the band’s second album “At Mount Zoomer” in 2008, but that record did little to build on the buzz from their phenomenal first release; it just wasn’t a spectacular album. Since that second album fizzled, Boeckner focused on his side project HANDSOME FURS, which is a duo comprised of himself and wife Alexei Perry. Krug spread himself thin over side acts FIFTHS OF SEVEN, FROG EYES, SWAN LAKE, SUNSET RUBDOWN, and MOONFACE.
The two men are as effective a duo of singers as the likes of SIMON & GARFUNKEL, HALL & OATES and more recently ANIMAL COLLECTIVE. They are super different, but incredibly emotive and charismatic, which is likely why both men felt the need to set the band aside while they took their talents elsewhere, alone, away from the “group.” Both Krug’s and Boeckner’s solo projects were very good, but they failed to reach the level of quality so evident in WOLF PARADE’s compositions. Krug composes most of the music himself, and his production brings the best out of Boeckner. Some worried that there was a rift between the two men, and that that was the reason for the lack of importance they seemed to place on WOLF PARADE. Luckily everyone was wrong, they are still great friends and thankfully have come back together for this upcoming third full-length album.
One of the best songs of the last decade, by far, was on WOLF PARADE’s first album. “I’ll Believe in Anything” dropped in 2005 and put the world on notice. The hurt and honesty that spilled out of Boeckner and Krug on that track made instant fans out of tons of indie rock enthusiasts, and crept into the minds of music fans of all sorts, giving WOLF PARADE a level of buzz rarely experienced by indie bands. But their follow-up album, “At Mount Zoomer,” paled in comparison to the first release, and left fans clamoring for the next “I’ll Believe in Anything,” or “Modern World,” another classic off the first release. All those fans now eagerly await the release of WOLD PARADE’s third album, “Expo 86,” thankful that Krug and Boeckner are not at odds and that they’ve set down their solo acts, hopefully with bigger things in mind. Because that’s exactly what the first single “Ghost Pressure” suggests: bigger things. “Expo 86” will be released on June 29 via Sub Pop Records.
