Wolf Parade Howls

A young indie rock band from Montreal heralded by the collective orgasm of Pitchfork Media and the alternative music press. Been there, bought the t-shirt. But this year’s Canadian sensation Wolf Parade is not merely a new incarnation of the Arcade Fire, as their performance at TT the Bear’s last Thursday showed.

For those unacquainted with the Central Square locale, TT’s was designed by Maytag as the world’s most efficient toaster oven. Its sweltering smallness makes it a good concert venue by other measures, though; you can pretty much see the band from anywhere, and it’s hard not to feel the energy of a performance, if only from a strange man grinding his chest against your back while the floor imminently threatens collapse from the seemingly random gyrations of the crowd.

But, dogged by errors, Wolf Parade never really took advantage of the space. Opening with “Shine a Light”—at a significantly faster pace than on the album version—they got the room going even as Dan Boeckner, one of two lead singers, appeared ready to give himself whiplash. Then, as soon as the song finished, the technical difficulties began.

A minute dragged into five, and no one in the band stepped forward to fill the relative silence with idle chit-chat or weird Canadian jokes. Talk about a momentum killer. The same misfortune seemed to recur after every number, so that the concert felt like a series of song islands suspended in a morass of re-tuning and feedback.

But what songs! Forget Boeckner’s head-banging spectacle-mongering; if “I’ll Believe in Anything” doesn’t stir you, you might be dead. The first few bars of the song, which were truly well-positioned last in the set, descended on the crowd like the mythical Circe’s spell, transforming tired and overheated twentysomethings into a roiling swinish mass oinking-along for their mother’s teat (in this case, keyboardist Spencer Krug’s vocals).

If only the middle of the concert had maintained the energy from the opening or closing numbers. Technical issues were part of the problem, but the band’s own structure doesn’t help. Although of the band’s two lead singers, Krug has the more musically interesting voice, his songs lack visual presence. He merely stood and played the keyboard off on the side of the stage, making it hard for his performance to generate any intense energy. Partly because rock keyboardists are hands down the most boring live musicians ever.

Concertgoers coming to a Wolf Parade show expecting the Arcade Fire will inevitably be disappointed. Boeckner and company are not nearly as polished performers as their Montreal compatriots, but that could be the result of their intense touring schedule (Broeckner sounded hoarse throughout).

There is a rawness to these performances that distinguishes them from their slicker Pitchfork Media brethren and it’s a breath of fresh air for us musically inclined porcine.