Pitchfork

There's more. Guitarist/vocalist Dan Boeckner and drummer Arlen Thompson have played with the Arcade Fire (those are Arlen's drums you're hearing on Funeral's "Wake Up"), and Arlen is also in a two-piece with ex-Hot Hot Heat guitarist Dante Decaro. My favorite vocalist in the crew, keyboardist Spencer Krug, has played and recorded with Frog Eyes, toured as a pianist with Destroyer, and records solo material as the skeletal, lo-fi, and often stunning Sunset Rubdown. (Check his take on one of Wolf Parade's best songs, "I'll Believe in Anything".) So the question, then, is how to take Wolf Parade's music purely on its own terms, without the excess baggage of peripheral relations, anticipation, and perceived hype.

Well, let's start with what it sounds like. Some will proclaim that Wolf Parade don't diverge too greatly-- if at all-- from the standard-issue indie rock template, and they won't necessarily be wrong about that. Thing is, all old/new/left/right sounds are out there for anyone to pillage, but for a band to pillage with enough acuity or verve to make the stuff sound so much their own is a rarity. Like Spencer, Dan, or Arlen's friends the Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade remold familiarity into especially effective anthems, ballads, and dance-floor crashers. But unlike many of their peers, they transition between spastic pop and gloriously pretty Bowie theatricality without showing seams. Here, layered hooks and caffeinated-savant melodies are recollected in tranquility.

Opener "Shine a Light"-- not to be mistaken for the Constantines track of the same name-- is an equatorial, upbeat blender of various vocal lines, wool-blanket laser-tag keyboards, and a cinched drum-and-guitar groove, until it eventually heaves and collapses into a keyboard pile-up finale. "You Are a Runner and I Am My Father's Son" (included here, but also slated as the opening track of the forthcoming album) is Modest Mouse dancing a fuzzed minuet with Rain Dogs and The Lonesome Crowded West's long-lost Orange Julius. Unfortunately, the two non-LP B-sides aren't as hot: "Disco Sheets" boils down to post-punk Bowie (sans mountains' majesty), while "Lousy Pictures" is a mid-tempo circus ode (with a tricky Pet Sounds sleigh bell break) riffing on hanging in trees and throwing rocks at the sky. Certainly, Sub Pop could've included any number of better tracks from the full-length, but then, it's not too difficult to see why they might not want to show all their cards at once.

As bloggers illustrate daily, hype now comes pre-packaged with backlash. Kneejerks start sighing as soon as nice things start getting said, which for Wolf Parade might have been right around the time that the CBC Radio 3 sessions-- their first recordings to show palpable promise-- found their way onto the web last November. But it's also worth noting that this band shouldn't be judged by this EP alone. As a promotional tool seemingly designed to simply keep their momentum afloat, it's half castoffs and doesn't do justice to the way their infectious poetics unfold across Apologies to the Queen Mary, where bar-room sing-alongs break into hymns for hungry ghosts and summer anthems are somehow born cliche-free. Still, for the curious, the two LP tracks should whet appetites for what's to come-- and judging the music purely on its own merits, that stands to be some fairly rewarding stuff.