Wolf Parade Album: "Apologies to the Queen Mary" Release Date: Sep 27, 2005 Label: Sub PopRock- Rev Value: [8.0/10] Genre: Rock Styles: Indie Rock, Indie Pop Buy It

Tracklist:

1 You Are a Runner and I Am My Father's Son (2:54)
2 Modern World (2:52)
3 Grounds and Divorce (3:25)
4 We Built Another World (3:15)
5 Fancy Claps (2:51)
6 Same Ghost Every Night (5:44)
7 Shine a Light (3:47)
8 Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts (3:39)
9 I'll Believe in Anything (4:36)
10 It's a Curse (3:12)
11 Dinner Bells (7:34)
12 This Heart's on Fire (3:59)

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review by:Allmusic
reviewer: Johnny Loftus
Album Value: (4/5)

Montreal quartet Wolf Parade's full-length debut fully lives up to the potential bred by their early EPs and all those gushing blogs. They use Apologies to the Queen Mary producer Isaac Brock to their best advantage, acknowledging their debt to Modest Mouse but using his ear as a resource to tinge their endearingly brittle indie pop tunes accordingly. Spencer King and Dan Boeckner both sing in that certain kind of wry yelp that seems so quirkily marketable in the mid-2000s — see the Shins, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Hot Hot Heat — and it doesn't hurt that most of Wolf Parade's songs are pretty top, too. "Shine a Light" and "You Are a Runner and I Am My Father's Son" repeat from the self-titled EP, "Grounds and Divorce" bops along on cheery keyboard effects and an eight-note guitar solo, and Boeckner honks roughly over the modified new wave of "It's a Curse." Wolf Parade admit their love and theft of the past 30 years of rock music, from Bowie to Black Francis. They allow that, then purposely strip the songs of any slickness or accoutrements, so the keys and squiggly guitars and terrifically simple drums (Arlen Thompson might play just a kick drum and one big snare) teeter and balance together in a hectic and gloriously alive pop state. Have you heard Wolf Parade? They'll change your life.

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review by:Pitchfork
reviewer: Brandon Stosuy, September 26, 2005
Album Value: (9.2/10)

Considering the amount of pre-release talk surrounding Apologies to the Queen Mary, it's inevitable that reviews of Wolf Parade's debut will contain bad wolf puns, Modest Mouse references (Isaac Brock recorded much of the album), riffs on Montreal's music scene by those who couldn't locate the city on a map, and namechecks of the quartet's pals, the Arcade Fire and Frog Eyes. Amid the noise, what Apologies might not receive is the close listening it deserves.

There's no question the lonesome crowded sound is here, but when Wolf Parade dig in and dust off their influences, the band rolls like a Ritalin-deprived power-Bowie or 70s Eno flexing piano-based hooks over Pixified rhythms. Component ingredients include electronics, keyboards, guitar, drums, and two spastically surging, forever tuneful vocalists (Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug), but there are also surprises: A theremin cries in the slow-poke "Same Ghost Every Night"-- one of the longer tracks, it grows in pageantry as it swells to the six-minute mark-- and a spot of noise-guitar echoes throughout Krug's windy "Dinner Bells". And unlike most participants in indie rock's million-band march, Wolf Parade makes familiar elements mesh in special ways.

Groups like Neutral Milk Hotel and the Arcade Fire inspire listeners to both feel their music and listen closely to what's being said. Wolf Parade's Boeckner and Krug sing so energetically it can be difficult transcribing, but as lyrics reveal themselves on multiple listens, Apologies is populated by ghosts, crumbled brick, haunted technology, Marcel Dzama animals, fathers and mothers, off-kilter love songs, rusted gold, and endtime/brand new world scenarios that furnish the album's ornate instrumentation and clever arrangements with an inspired if elliptical story arc.

The album's roughly split between Boeckner and Krug, their tracks often alternating to a tee. But there is a non-cut/dry bleed between them, with both showing up on the same song, backing each other, screaming at the same time. I wouldn't want to inspire a quarterback controversy, but I tend to be a Krug man-- to my ear, he's the more intriguing lyricist, a Bowie-inflected guy tackling nonstandard song constructions. On the other hand, Boeckner is more traditionally palatable, which may make him the favorite by consensus: His work is often less unhinged or unpredictable, and this focus allows for some of the album's most immediate standouts.(...)

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review by: tinymixtapes
reviewer: tamec
Album Value: (4/5)

Wolf Parade is a pretty exciting band. Initially brought to attention by Modest Mouse's Issac Brock, Wolf Parade's widespread adulation has continued primarily through word-of-mouth, without much non-surfacy press attention until this summer's final teaser. But perhaps it's a boon to Apologies to the Queen Mary, the band's full-length debut, that the band's prior output didn't receive the attention it deserved. Of AttQM's 12 cuts, all but 3 have been available either on one of the band's first 3 EPs or, in the case of "Shine a Light" and "I'll Believe in Anything," as live in-studio (at CBC Radio 3) downloads. The band has only been together since 2003, however, and to ask them to amass more quality material than has landed on their records thus far is a bit too much to ask, even of Wolf Parade.

But rather than bitch about the lack of new songs, why not talk about how good they are? Like the Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade aren't doing anything particularly new -- the shrieky vocals, dirty guitars, and oscillating synthesizers won't shock anyone who's been listening to Modest Mouse and the like since the mid-90s. Wolf Parade's songs are mostly built around surprisingly catchy, surprisingly simple ideas -- be it the military stomp of album opener "You Are a Runner...," the elegant, sleepy riff of "Dinner Bells," or the sing-song melody of "Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts." Apologies to the Queen Mary takes the best songs off each Wolf Parade release to date, cleans them up (that first EP was pretty fucking lo-fi), and, quite frankly, makes a realistic bid for The O.C. The unfortunate thing for the aloof among us, though, is that Wolf Parade do what they do better than anyone in recent memory. And they have a marginally better name than The Arcade Fire. Marginally.

Anyway, this is a real good record, and you'll probably have to listen to it whether you want to or not.

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review by: Pop Matters
reviewer: Liam Colle
Album Value: (9/10)

The Album of This Year's Decade

Forty-eight minutes of music to last all day. The '00s have already provided some amazing debut records and Wolf Parade join the flood with force. This is art and vigor, but vigor first. This is hart rock, overwrought and almost ridiculous. Like The Constantines, TV on the Radio and Funeral, the only thing saving Apologies to the Queen Mary from absurdity is their blind-sighted intensity. Irony is useless to these bands and it sounds like the malaise is finally crashing and burning. Listen to "Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts" and you'll hear the death knells of yesterday's cynical detachment.

It's hard to make the things you do in a day count for something. That's Wolf Parade's point. Even for the most avant-garde, there's probably only a few seconds in a day when one can actually be an artist. No matter how high-minded or righteous you are, you have to eat and the rent comes due. Of course these restrictive realities fluctuate depending on culture and class, but everyone faces the frustration of the day-to-day. The point is though, that this inevitability doesn't have to equate with hopeless immobility. Wolf Parade attack cynicism and cash in on all their future allotments of artistic movement for one album that matters right now. Apologies to the Queen Mary magically melds the everyday with art, gravity with feeling, and creates something tangible yet wildly impractical.

It all sounds incredibly naive and would come across way too Disney if it wasn't for the severity of the players in Wolf Parade. Arlen Thompson's drums open the album and set up a momentous canvas for the rest of the band to work with. As Thompson bangs away with staggering authority, Hadji Bakara's and Spencer Krug's keyboard idiosyncrasies battle against Boeckner's rough and heaving guitar. It's wonderfully unrefined and utterly relentless. Their playing is so irrational that it borders on sublime. It's as if they're transcribing the frustration of the everyday, to which everyone is not afforded the luxury of expression.

What really distinguishes Apologies to the Queen Mary from just another ambitious rock album though, is the dynamic and accessible songwriting -- and the voices that propel those songs from the streets to the stratosphere. Krug and Boeckner trade off vocal duties throughout the album, but it feels less like "it's your turn to sing" than "I need that microphone now". Take Krug's "I'll Believe in Anything" or Boeckner's "This Hearts on Fire" for example. Both songs are born of the same laws of the howl as they churn and explode into anthems for the re-enchanted disillusioned. Not only will the melodies stick in your head, this stuff is going to get under your skin.

I'm not sure whether Wolf Parade will be around for that long, but this record should stand the test of time. Their hasty convergence and dramatic tactics make Apologies to the Queen Mary seem more like a torrid affair than a first step. Either way, it sounds as if we can add it to the pile of this decade's best. Stumbling artists from our graceless times, Wolf Parade's music might actually matter to some people.

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review by: Lost At Sea
reviewer: Sarah Peters
Album Value: (9/10)

hen listening to Wolf Parade, the phrase “on its head” continually comes to mind: they turn indie pop on its head - in fact they, very impressively, spin the sorts of indie pop that was already on its head to an even more acute degree. They turn what we already know about them on its head, giving already published songs new placement and prominence, and with such arrangement, new meaning and effectiveness. Everything looks better from their carefully chosen angles; with such a daring, thorough perspective, they turn what could very well be a predictably great album on its head to be even greater than we could have ever hoped.

Beginning with the afore-adored “You Are a Runner and I am My Father’s Son,” Apologies to the Queen Mary starts off smartly. One gets the feeling of beginning at a middle ground - at the center of a work already in progress. The track functions as an opening segway from dramatic action curiously unseen and begins the album in shambles: already liquored, desperate and willing to make a pact with the devil. The level of intrigue is already high as it moves to the silver-toned angst of “Modern World”, with all of its apt, crippling metropolitan phobias of disassociation, and its surprisingly spooky, enduring breezes.

Our first glimpse at true optimism, then, despite any hidden warmth, is the third track, “Grounds for Divorce”, whose ironic title is concerning in the face of such a chipper, Lonesome Crowded West style singalong. And when Wolf Parade grabs a hold of hope, it is proven right to never let go. The track’s fruit-colored guitars, bouncing movements and irrepressible vocal expressions are bizarrely contented considering its context and its insistence an impossible lover “looks like a newlywed.” When the muted, metallic tones previously championed by Wolf Parade turn invigoratingly bright, as they do on “Grounds for Divorce,” it turns even turning itself on its head, blasting through every level of irony to focus on something real and human. These are the plentiful moments, stronger than steel and steeliness, where Wolf Parade shows how undying hope is. It is a theme they are all too qualified to carry, as they themselves are bastions of such imperishable goodness.

As “We Built Another World” uses a truly unpredictable pace to twist dance-punk inside out, and “Fancy Claps” propels wailing choirs and oddly shaped punk into a tumbling keyboard oblivion, we certainly start to get it: Wolf Parade can play up any too-familiar style, paranoia or sentiment with ease and success, but they aren’t about to play anything straight or without light; it is exactly what makes them so unquestionably thrilling to listen to, time and again.(...)

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review by: Stylus
reviewer: Derek Miller
Album Value: (A)

Bark to yourself, in tongue-bite, in seizure, and listen to your voice bristle with spasm. Watch the concern and genuine sense of incapacity fill the eyes of your neighbours. What now. All sense flows out of the skin right then, and it’s down to fantasy, terror, cacophony, and awful heartache. Then imagine yourself surrounded by sizzling synths, drunken piano stomps, and lock-step pirate rhythms. Now you got it, and you have company: Wolf Parade has beaten you here, to this place. They’re waiting for you, seated, with bearded grins and shaggy chins. How’s it feel to have stumbled on the best sound of the fall?

This Montreal quartet’s back story is pretty well understood by now. First show with Arcade Fire. Released two fuzzy, self-produced EPs to subtle acclaim. Toured with AF and Modest Mouse. Caught the ear of Isaac Brock early on, who championed them to Sub Pop, and has now produced their debut, Apologies to the Queen Mary. Phew. Glad to have that out of the way.

This overgloried history shouldn’t really matter. But when a band manages to surpass all the bloated noise of indie mags and blogs, all of the muscle of the hype machine, it’s worth noting. With Apologies to the Queen Mary, Wolf Parade have done just that. They’ve cleaned up their grungy guitar lines (thank you Sub Pop), reworked a few of the best songs from their early EPs, and the result is undoubtedly the best contender for the Arcade Fire/Broken Social Scene-helm of 2005.

Mostly, we have a shaggy collection of garbled torchsongs sung in drizzle. Arlen Thompson’s frantic drums are often pushed high in the mix, to snake past hushed acoustic guitar parts and carnival keyboards, all entangled and knotted like ‘locks. Mixing the high-drama art-pop of friends the Arcade Fire with wry acoustic ballads that recall the work of Brock’s own band, Wolf Parade encompass all of the musical oddities Canadian bands seem to have perfected. “You Are a Runner and I Am My Father’s Son” joins organ stabs with short drum fills against a starlit circus shuffle, all the madmen unsoaped, unshaved, unbathed and free to rape the night. Co-lead Spencer King drains low, and the band seems to look the other way with its distant backdrop, “I was a hero early in the morning/I ain’t no hero in the night.”.(...)

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