Wolf Parade’s debut full-length album, Apologies to the Queen Mary, was a decidedly manic and unnerving album. The lyrics were more spat out than sung, with odd vocal twitches from both Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug. The instrumentation was jagged and aggressive, with guitars in the forefront. The album’s themes were vague but not obtuse; most songs implied both an internal and outward tension and dissatisfaction that made it pretty clear the characters in these songs weren’t the types of people you’d want to have a beer with. Indie fans and critics swooned and raved with wild superlatives
At Mount Zoomer finds Wolf Parade exploring similar themes as their debut album, but with a noticeably different vocal style and instrumental sound. Like the best moments of Apologies, the songs hint at Big Existential Concepts without getting heavy-handed or laughably philosophical: images of death are most noticeable, with enough bleakness to put a downer on anyone’s day (“like some dead relative you will remember me most”). Boeckner and Krug’s subjects all tend to feel perilously out of place in their environment (“Soldier’s Grin”), engage in pointless acts for no apparent reason (“all this work just to tear it down” in “Language City”), or desperately seek to escape their lives (“The Grey Estates”).
The vocal approach taken by both singers is very different from Apologies. Modest Mouse frontman/deranged carnival barker Isaac Brock’s vocal influence was felt throughout that album in his role as producer, with Wolf Parade’s lyrics often being yelped out and oddly phrased in a way that occasionally made the words hard to decipher (it’s not the Canadian accent, as one less-than-enthused smartass friend once told me after listening to the album).
On Zoomer, the vocals are mostly far more controlled and restrained, without making the songs sound any less urgent. There’s also an audible fatigue in both singer’s voices that serves the songs well. In some ways, this restraint actually heightens the tension throughout the album’s songs.
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