Wolf Parade - Expo 86 (Music review)

Wolf Parade started off with a bang, just like any new relationship. We've all been there: You start dating someone, and it's like you've fallen in love for the first time. There's bells in the air, you constantly feel like you have the energy to climb a mountain, you want to sing, you want to dance, seriously, you're Tom Cruise on a couch.

That's how I felt five years ago when I first heard Wolf Parade, yet here, at the release of their third album, I'm about to tell you why I'm bored with them now; a brief retrospective...

Let's start by laying it out on the table that Apologies to the Queen Mary was, arguably, the best album of 2005, right? It had energy, it had melodies, it had awesome lyrics, good slow songs, good faster songs, you could dance to it, you could cry to it, you could fuck to it, you could probably fold it into a pretty decent hat (I guess), if you had thousands of copies you could probably build a chair out of it or wallpaper your bathroom. As far as I was concerned, it was so good you could listen to it as a meal replacement. Fuckin' thing made life better in 2005.

Wolf Parade released At Mt Zoomer in 2008 to lukewarm reviews, because all in all it was a lukewarm album. While their first album had all the bells and whistles of a band fully committed to their sound, At Mt Zoomer felt like a twenty-something stuck in a committed relationship they didn't want to be in; running around town filling up on frivolous melodies that aren't ever going to call you back, not even for a booty call. Not a bad album, but it sure wasn't great start to finish.

Bands like Interpol, Sigur Ros, The Strokes, and Wilco have all made missteps with their most recent albums, but their older ones are so good that everyone is willing to give the new ones a chance. According to interviews on Pitchfork with various band members, we're all still listening to Wolf Parade with good reason; Expo 86 is supposed to be “more fun”, with songs that are “really dense” and “carry a lot more energy”. Well cudos to them, this album is arguably all of those things. Unfortunately, it's not enough to keep the album from being really boring, and ends up being lamer than At Mt Zoomer.

Expo 86 is strange, because it's a boring album that – to it's credit - does a couple of things really, really well: First of all, there are some strong melodies here. I guess that's a pretty vague statement – you could probably argue that Weezer's new album had some strong melodies on it, shitty as they are – but parts of these songs really stick out and bury themselves in your brain. The other thing this album does well is in capturing the live feel of this band, something that was missing from their sophomore effort. According to Spencer Krug, Expo 86 was recorded live off the floor with minimal overdubbing.

So as a result the songs feel energetic, natural, and more upbeat, and that's good right? Oddly, it's this live feel that also creates the albums greatest downfall; The songs feel like the kind of long-winded jam sessions you or your friends have when they're drunk on a friday, each one running a minute or two (or three) longer than they need to. I'm not exaggerating when I say 'each one' – every single track is bloated, and far too long for it's own good (and in a lot of cases, really poorly mixed and leveled). “Cloud Shadow on the Mountain” starts off the disc well enough with a driving drumbeat and a half decent melody, but after a long-winded and lazy mid-section with careless guitar melodies and predictable drum breakdowns - for almost two minutes no less - you're left wondering if they spent any time at all refining their structure. The same issue pops up in the albums strongest tracks, “Little Golden Age” and “Pobody's Nerfect” - both have strong leading melodies ruined by far too much noodling. All in all, this turns into an incredibly boring 50+ minute long album that could have been a great 30 minute long album.

So it's not completely terrible - like I said, there are some really strong melodies here - “Little Golden Age” and “Palm Road” have taken turns being stuck in my head (not a sign of good songwriting, but at least it's something). Still, this isn't an album that's going to last longer than a couple weeks on even the biggest Wolf Parade fan's playlist. I managed to listen to Expo 86 seven times in the last week - purely to be fair writing this - and seeing as how I'm listening to a leaked version, there's always the chance that I'm listening to something that wasn't finished. Then again, with songwriting this lazy maybe they just don't know when to finish a song anymore.