As occasional quality control for the daily agendas, a little bit about one of our suggestions for Monday night: Wolf Parade and Frog Eyes¹ at the Showbox

Yesterday, I mentioned the technical difficulties that plagued Wolf Parade [myspace] during their set when I saw perform in very un-Canadian temperatures. Last night at the Showbox, the only complication was a mild fever for Dan[te DeCampo], who still joined his bandmates on stage in flip flops rather than calling in sick and leaving the band without eccentric percussion, guitar, and supporting vocals. However, because he’s their regular delegate for crowd banter operations (keyboard/vocals guy Spencer Krug claims to hate the sound of his own voice), gaps between songs were not particularly chatty. They did, however, feature short cheerleading and stretching routines during microphone adjustment delays.

Last night set kicked off with “Grounds for Divorce”, which features one of the more romantic descriptions of the awful sound of braking busses in modern lyricism. While it’s unlikely that the choice of opening song referred to our local lost-and-found whale, it doesn’t hurt to imagine a customized setlist, does it? After playing a song that I didn’t recognize, they returned to familiar material from Apologies to the Queen Mary. It’s during this section that the assembled crowd got what they were waiting for — momentarily going wild for the opening bars of “Sons and Daughters of Holy Ghosts”. The spasmodic dance party on the floor eventually slows to a more reserved head-nodding party as even the fantastic synthy riff from “We Built Another World” isn’t enough to reboot most spectators from their static appreciative stances. While this is disappointing to those of us in the audience trying to achieve the delicate balance between not being able to stand still and appreciating the importance of not going all flailing superfan, it is understandable. After all, it is a school night and people need to conserve their energy for the next morning’s drudgery.

Songs in the Wolf Parade live show experience are not dramatically different from the recorded versions,² but they do play around just enough to make songs that you’ve listened to a thousand times while stuck in an airport over xmas break sound fresh. You don’t get this with every indie band, especially in such a good way. Some parts come across as more spare, accelerated, and urgent; middle sections are stretched out and exaggerated; in short it’s nice to see that the band is actually still having fun with familiar songs. It’s also worth noting that when you’re experiencing the band with headphones it’s easy to forget about all of the switching vocals, which bounce back and forth between Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug between and within songs. And it’s difficult to appreciate the amount of work that Hadji Bakara puts into the theremin until he’s right in front of your face, wailing away on that antenna and fidgeting with the synthesizer all night.

Eventually, though, we get preview of some fresh material.³ Although none of it departs significantly from their existing catalog, they thank us for our patience with plenty of unnecessary self-deprecation. With the new music showcase out of the way, they close out the show raucous renditions of two of my favorite songs: “I’ll Believe In Anything” and “This Heart’s On Fire.”

With that, they break for the green room and make us work for our encore, returning only after being summoned by a substantial amount of rhythmic clapping and foot stomping. They come back out and thank us for their nicest Seattle reception, claiming that whenever they’ve played here, they’ve sucked it up in front of the the label [SubPop, who gave me my ticket]. I’m pretty certain this is overzealous modesty, but it’s a nice gesture nonetheless. The show ends as they embarking on a “sad quiet slow” song to send us “all home unhappy.” This can only mean “Dinner Bells” — which starts standardly enough. But rather than living up to their promise of a melancholy finale, they let the end stutter a bit, throwing the choruses around and making them new, turning the last few minutes into and intense and building send-off.

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1. The thing about Frog Eyes is that it doesn’t seem like anyone is really there to see them. Sure, a sizeable group assembles on the floor to secure premium vantage points for the headliners, but few people’s hearts are in it. This is mostly obvious as several small domestic dramas play out among guys and the girlfriends who make occasional gestures to convince their dates that maybe it might be more fun to watch the band from the bar. Or at least away from the front rows. This is not to say that there’s anything particularly wrong with Frog Eyes, who don’t necessarily win any new friends by start off with a string of nearly amelodic numbers. Eventually, hints of something more traditionally musical try to fight their way through the clutter. Keyboard and guitar melodies, only vaguely related to each other (let alone the vocals) climb over each other and jockey for position with in the mix, occasionally colliding and conspiring with drumming and the mostly incomprehensible lyrics. By the middle of the set, all of the elements seem to come to a tenuous agreement, adding to each other, making rollicking climbs up and down the scales together. Although the resolution isn’t as satisfying as I might have hoped from the extended negotiations, for a few moments, before they go their separate ways again, it’s works out to something kind of special.

2. For a general idea of this, the CBC recording sessions [yanp] are a good start. As is the multimedia section at the band’s SubPop page [#].

3. Speaking of these new songs, did anyone happen to record some mp3s?

Related posts:

1. addendum : wolf parade
2. SP20 West: Foals, Wolf Parade at Neumos
3. saturday agenda : rilo kiley, mumblecore, holy fuck! wolf parade
4. siberian, holy fuck!, wolf parade at neumo’s
5. scissor sisters at the showbox : a follow-up report