« UMS Pick - Hearts of Palm | Main | Denver/Boulder: Shows this week | 8.04 - 8.10 »
August 03, 2008
Wolf Parade, live @ Terminal 5, New York City, 07.31.08
"If you're going to be doing the mosh, be careful," I think I heard Spencer Krug say as I was negotiating with a very snippy beer girl at the back of the room. It was a fittingly enthusiasm dampening statement from a band whose work has sort of outpaced its own humble intentions. Back in 2005, Apologies to the Queen Mary had them constantly mentioned in the same epic breath as their friends and countrymen in Arcade Fire. But where Arcade Fire's success lead them to embrace their bigness--their U2 stadium destiny--Wolf Parade seemed to shrink from the spotlight. As I noted in my now cringeworthy first post ever for this site, they frequently countered big show nerves with college kid drinking. They soon scattered into sidebands, a move that seemed at least as much about logistics as it did aesthetics. With the engaging songs of Sunset Rubdown's Shut Up I am Dreaming in my head and some intriguing Handsome Furs demos bleeding in, I once hypothesized that this temporary dissipation would by make Wolf Parade something of a supergroup by default. When finally stitched back together, the weight of their accumulated work couldn't help but launch them into a different stratosphere of attention and success, I thought. Instead, the sideways hyper-personal tendencies of each songwriter's projects modified (and in certain ways diminished) the wide appeal that Apologies promised. While I personally hold At Mt. Zoomer (the fruit of their reformation) in high regard as one of the more accomplished records of a generally off year, Krug himself concedes it's not likely to land them on SNL any time soon.
So what does that mean for Wolf Parade in 2008? As the sold out two-night stand at the truly massive Terminal 5 proves, they still hold sway over a sizable constituency. But it seemed to me that the songs best suited to that mob were the old hits. "Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts" was an instantly agitating element, outshining the charging, but never sparking "Grey Estates" that preceded it. Terminal 5's stringent on-timeness made me miscalculate my arrival, but I'd wager the set opening "You are a Runner, and I am My Father's Son" caused a similar frenzy. Which is not to say that their increased professionalism and musical ability (not to mention blood to Jaeger ratio) didn't let them nail the new record's pricklier moments. If the swaying guitar line of "Fine Young Cannibals" was even more svelte and assured on stage than on disc, the heaving, tangled mass of "Kissing the Beehive" was a revelation. The band ably shaped the ten-minute track's multiple crescendos in a manner they would never have been able to a few years ago at the crest of their renown.
Wolf Parade - "I'll Believe in Anything"
(live @ Terminal 5, 07.31.2008)
But nothing I heard on Thursday night made as much sense in its cavernous surroundings as their closing number, "I'll Believe in Anything." You know you've heard a band's best song when a rabid crowd immediate gives up hope for a second encore and starts streaming for the exits without a fight. I mean what could they come back and play to follow it? As interesting and progressive as the new record can be, it doesn't contain a track that bleeds emotional resonance like that one. At this point, they seem more likely to move back to playing Webster Hall or the Bowery than making another quantum leap to MSG. They'll likely put out records that are increasingly personal and oblique. While the unimpeachable song-writing talent involved assures continued artistic merit, it doesn't change Wolf Parade's current trajectory--a big band, getting smaller all the time.
Posted by Jeff Klingman at August 3, 2008 12:00 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.merryswankster.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/1704
