Wolf Parade-At Mount Zoomer-2008-RTB

ARTIST: Wolf Parade
TITLE: At Mount Zoomer
LABEL: Sub Pop
GENRE: Indie
BITRATE: 200kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 46m total
RELEASE DATE: 2008-06-17
RIP DATE: 2008-06-12

Track List1. Soldier's Grin 4:37
2. Call It A Ritual 2:45
3. Language City 5:02
4. Bang Your Drum 3:10
5. California Dreamer 6:00
6. The Grey Estates 3:26
7. Fine Young Cannibals 6:31
8. An Animal In Your Care 4:19
9. Kissing The Beehive 10:52

Release Notes:

Recorded and engineered by drummer Arlen Thompson, At Mount Zoomer is Wolf
Parade’s second album for Sub Pop. Their first, Apologies to the Queen Mary,
came out in the fall of 2005 and was described by Uncut magazine as, “frequently
appealing.”

Singer/guitarist Dan Boeckner: “After Apologies… we wrote about four or five new
songs, but we decided to throw them out because they sounded too much like what
we’d already done. We could have easily made another Apologies… but what would
have been the point?” Instead, the band committed itself to a period of
experimentation, recording long improvisational sessions in the Montreal church
owned by The Arcade Fire. These tracks were then cut and pasted into discrete
compositions. The result is a complex matrix of components and modules that,
thanks to the collective efforts of each band member, never feels labored or
fussy. From the nimble opening strains of “Soldier’s Grin” to the eleven-minute
aggro dirge of “Kissing the Beehive,” they hand authority of the songs around
among them with a refreshing absence of ownership. Where Apologies… could be
read as a good-natured, sweaty volleyball match between Boeckner and
singer/keyboardist Spencer Krug, the new album shows the band as a fully
coordinated moving front. This collaboration isn’t just a work ethic—the band’s
many offshoots, side projects, and domestic ventures have taken each of them far
from their home base in Montreal for extended periods, compressing their time as
a functioning unit. “It’s hard enough to get us all in the same room at the same
time,” Krug said of the band’s approach, “so when we do get to write songs there
isn’t really time for our egos to get in the way.”

The legion of bearded, sweater-vested critics will want to file this album under
‘Prog Rock’ because it doesn’t offer up sugary cast-offs for the
short-attention-span set, but no one ever danced to The Lamb Lies Down on
Broadway. It might instead be this generation’s Marquee Moon, or an indie rock
Chinese Democracy released thirty years early and sixty million dollars under
budget (and without cornrows, to boot). Better, though, to think of it as the
sound of a band edging forward into a wispy darkness, one hand reaching out, the
other firmly clutching the past.