I saw a three-man iteration of Wolf Parade, prior to releasing its debut record, headline the intimate back space at Pianos in 2005. Memory being a wonderfully imperfect human device, all my recollections of the evening involve me watching the band saw through its catalog in a nearly empty room, a thoroughly implausible claim given that show’s sold-out status.
The room did not feel at all empty last week uptown at the comparatively colossal Terminal 5, where these Canadians, now expanded to a five piece, played two consecutive nights for crowds of thousands.
Down on the floor, being cooled from overhead by the vast hanger's overly efficient air conditioning, I was tightly planted next to a stray garbage can throughout the Terminal 5 set, occasionally jostled by the standard on-a-beer-run types that populate any rock event happening on the outskirts of Midtown Manhattan.
Keyboard player Spencer Krug and guitarist Dan Boeckner, piling angular anthems over top noisily skewed instrumentation, alternated lead vocals, both being adept at the warble-throated indie shriek that Wolf Parade has helped popularize in the last few years.
The trouble, however, was that I could tell them apart only by looking at them. It's hard to understand how the two men can both howl in such similarly raw, emotionally charged, hair-whitening manners, but I found myself standing on my toes and stretching my neck at the start of each song—Terminal 5 apparently being a place where tall dudes like to rock out—in order to verify which of them was taking lead duties.
But such, in 2008, is Wolf Parade actualized. My mind, at certain points in the set, couldn't help but remember how they sounded three years ago, how they felt like pure possibility and unsettling potential when they played a swift set of tunes from the then-unreleased Apologies To The Queen Mary for the curious attendees.
The impressive highs that band sometimes hit at Terminal 5 came most often in a song’s latter half. They erected their performance of “California Dreamer” on a sturdy foundation and then suffused the remainder with frantic, searching energy. The cut slow builds, as so many Wolf Parade songs do (on their latest release, the spectacular At Mount Zoomer); but on stage Krug feverishly pounded on his keys as he hunched over and convincingly brayed into the mic: “I think I might have heard you on the radio / but the radio waves are like snow.”
Boeckner had some big moments, too: one of the most impressive things about his songs being his ability to elevate blasé lyrics with tense delivery. If I ever want to hear lyrics of the “I'll be true / true to you” variety, I'd like to hear them the way he offered them up last week, his ethereal vocals dissolving the challenge of voicing such potentially corny fare.
What they didn't completely muster last week was simply a needed level of inclusiveness, a complaint that I lodge with the venue more than the band. In my memory, I was alone that night long ago at Pianos; but it was a self-losing, rapt kind of alone, soaking up an unfamiliar thing with none of the pesky, mitigating skepticism that's draped over hassle-laden, big-venue rock.
The Terminal 5 crowd, tame as ever, waited patiently with bursts of generally rote applause for the band to emerge for the encore. The encore has become an audience entitlement at shows, and it was perplexing to see all the un-clapping hands as concert goers placidly awaited something they no longer attempted to earn.
Wolf Parade returned with Boeckner and Krug offering terse but genuine thanks; and then they forcefully uprooted the previously composed crowd.
They ended things in obvious fashion, pulling out audience fave—“I'll Believe In Anything”—to energetically close out the night. I could hear voices ring out from among the crowd, and up toward the front some honest-to-God moshing began. There were bodies pogoing and colliding near the stage, the rest of the audience confidently raising their voices. It was an unlikely moment of mass participation and a semi-successful attempt to trump Terminal 5-sized alienation.
“I'd share a life / and you'd share a life” Krug sang, high voltage in his voice. The audience sounded much plainer, unthinkingly filling the room with the song's most appropriate line: “Nobody knows you/ and nobody gives a damn.”
The room did not feel at all empty last week uptown at the comparatively colossal Terminal 5, where these Canadians, now expanded to a five piece, played two consecutive nights for crowds of thousands.
Down on the floor, being cooled from overhead by the vast hanger's overly efficient air conditioning, I was tightly planted next to a stray garbage can throughout the Terminal 5 set, occasionally jostled by the standard on-a-beer-run types that populate any rock event happening on the outskirts of Midtown Manhattan.
Keyboard player Spencer Krug and guitarist Dan Boeckner, piling angular anthems over top noisily skewed instrumentation, alternated lead vocals, both being adept at the warble-throated indie shriek that Wolf Parade has helped popularize in the last few years.
The trouble, however, was that I could tell them apart only by looking at them. It's hard to understand how the two men can both howl in such similarly raw, emotionally charged, hair-whitening manners, but I found myself standing on my toes and stretching my neck at the start of each song—Terminal 5 apparently being a place where tall dudes like to rock out—in order to verify which of them was taking lead duties.
But such, in 2008, is Wolf Parade actualized. My mind, at certain points in the set, couldn't help but remember how they sounded three years ago, how they felt like pure possibility and unsettling potential when they played a swift set of tunes from the then-unreleased Apologies To The Queen Mary for the curious attendees.
The impressive highs that band sometimes hit at Terminal 5 came most often in a song’s latter half. They erected their performance of “California Dreamer” on a sturdy foundation and then suffused the remainder with frantic, searching energy. The cut slow builds, as so many Wolf Parade songs do (on their latest release, the spectacular At Mount Zoomer); but on stage Krug feverishly pounded on his keys as he hunched over and convincingly brayed into the mic: “I think I might have heard you on the radio / but the radio waves are like snow.”
Boeckner had some big moments, too: one of the most impressive things about his songs being his ability to elevate blasé lyrics with tense delivery. If I ever want to hear lyrics of the “I'll be true / true to you” variety, I'd like to hear them the way he offered them up last week, his ethereal vocals dissolving the challenge of voicing such potentially corny fare.
What they didn't completely muster last week was simply a needed level of inclusiveness, a complaint that I lodge with the venue more than the band. In my memory, I was alone that night long ago at Pianos; but it was a self-losing, rapt kind of alone, soaking up an unfamiliar thing with none of the pesky, mitigating skepticism that's draped over hassle-laden, big-venue rock.
The Terminal 5 crowd, tame as ever, waited patiently with bursts of generally rote applause for the band to emerge for the encore. The encore has become an audience entitlement at shows, and it was perplexing to see all the un-clapping hands as concert goers placidly awaited something they no longer attempted to earn.
Wolf Parade returned with Boeckner and Krug offering terse but genuine thanks; and then they forcefully uprooted the previously composed crowd.
They ended things in obvious fashion, pulling out audience fave—“I'll Believe In Anything”—to energetically close out the night. I could hear voices ring out from among the crowd, and up toward the front some honest-to-God moshing began. There were bodies pogoing and colliding near the stage, the rest of the audience confidently raising their voices. It was an unlikely moment of mass participation and a semi-successful attempt to trump Terminal 5-sized alienation.
“I'd share a life / and you'd share a life” Krug sang, high voltage in his voice. The audience sounded much plainer, unthinkingly filling the room with the song's most appropriate line: “Nobody knows you/ and nobody gives a damn.”
