disclaimer: this is not actually Mount Zoomer
We now have a title! Subpop released the offical title of the new Wolf Parade record: At Mount Zoomer. Mt Zoomer is the name of the recording studio run by Arlen Thompson and it’s where the band recorded the record. This is the offical title now. Hopefully the art work will be released soon. As posted earlier, the artwork will feature artists Matt Moroz and Elizabeth Huey.
You can pre oder the record now at Insound.com!
In other Wolf Parade news, the band will take part in Subpop’s 20th Anniversary festival on July 13th at Marymoor Park in Redmond, WA. Tickets are available here.
Sorry for the lag in news items, I was on vacation. First item of news is the upcoming Wolf Parade tour! Tickets are on pre sale at wolfparade.ducatking.com. Here is the full list of dates (thanks to snakes got a blog) :
July/August 2008
07-07: Pontiac, MI @ Crofoot Ballroom
07-08: Chicago, IL @ House of Blues
07-09: Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
07-12: Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom
07-13: Seattle, WA @ Marymoor Park (subpop festival)
07-15: Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom
07-17: San Francisco, Ca @ Fillmore
07-18: Hollywood, CA @ The Music Box at the Fonda
07-19: Hollywood, CA @ The Music Box at the Fonda
07-20: San Diego, CA @ Cane’s
07-21: Tucson, AZ @ Rialto Theatre
07-24: Dallas, TX @ Palladium Ballroom
07-25: Austin, TX @ La Zona Rosa
07-26: Baton Rouge, LA @ Spanish Moon
07-28: Atlanta, GA @ Variety Playhouse
07-29: Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle-Disco Rodeo
07-30: Philadelphia, PA @ Electric Factory
07-31: New York, NY @ Terminal 5
08-02: Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club
08-03: Montreal, QC @ Metropolis
08-09: Toronto, ON @ Koolhaus
In Sunset Rubdown news, you can now see some of the polaroids taken by David Horvitz of the band when they played Brooklyn last month. You can see more polaroids at Snakes Got A Blog as well as my flickr page. The band starts their European tour May 16th at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival.
Also Hadji Bakara is playing the Knitting Factory in New York City next Friday May 2nd with Sixtoo as the duo Megasoid. This is part of theLow End Theory residency.
The full version of “Call it a Ritual” has now found its way to the internet via various blogs. Stereogum has it along with a small paragraph giving us some insight into the rest of the record.
The collection, recorded and engineered by drummer Arlen Thompson, feels more cohesive, less Dan said/Spencer said than Apologies. You needn’t look any further than catchy keyboard descending opener “Soldier’s Grin” to hear the the mind-meld in action. Also, the Dan-fronted songs are the best of his career (Keep the awesome “Language City” and “The Grey Estates” in mind for future loving). On top of the songwriting chops, the record’s vast: For instance, the 11-minute, Jonathan Carroll-referencing duet “Kissing the Beehive” is a spiraling, operatic epic that talks about holy grails, unleashing lines like “you held your cup in the air and you called it a guitar” before twisting into extended instrumental passages.
Today something amazing happened, we finally got a taste of the new Wolf Parade record! Our many thanks go out to the lovely folks over at NPR’s All Songs Considered. The host of the show, Bob Boilen, posted on our forum that Wolf Parade would be featured on his show this week that aired previews of albums coming out this Spring. Even though the new record does not come out until June 17th, we were glad to hear the clip, even if it is only 1 minute long. Bob states that
“We are playing one minute of the song because that is the permission we have. We thank Sub Pop for allowing us to include Wolf Parade in our Spring 2008 look ahead show, since it is such an anticipated release. We will post the entire cut as soon as we have permission.”
Go HERE to listen to the one minute clip of ‘Call it a Ritual’. Thanks again Bob!
Finally after many months of speculation and false starts, the news of the second Wolf Parade record is upon us. While the title is still not set, the full tracklist was listed in this recent press release from Subpop:
Recorded and engineered by drummer Arlen Thompson, this 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.
Released: 2008-06-17 (CD), 2008-06-17 (LP)
Track List:
Soldier’s Grin
Call It a Ritual
Language City
Bang Your Drum
California Dreamer
The Grey Estates
Fine Young Cannibals
An Animal in Your Care
Kissing the Beehive
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