Wolf Parade: Stuck in the ’70s
July 26th, 2008 by Web Editor in Music news
By Ben Westhoff
Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock, arguably the reigning prime minister of indie rock, produced most of Wolf Parade’s first album, Apologies to the Queen Mary. Though the album won a rave review from Pitchfork and catapulted the band into the, um, underground rock stratosphere, something was off.
Many noted its strong similarities to Modest Mouse’s sound, and co-frontman Spencer Krug now describes it in even harsher terms. “I listen to some of those songs off Apologies to the Queen Mary and I’m like, ‘I can’t believe I wrote them,’” he says, speaking by phone while watering his plants at his home in Montreal. “I don’t even know where I started. Some of them are so convoluted, I have no idea what I was doing.”
Although he has nothing but kind things to say about the work of Brock – who also signed the band to Sub Pop in 2004 – he opines that using an outside producer wasn’t the best strategy. “We probably just weren’t ready to work with anyone at that point,” he says, adding that other factors kept the tracks from gelling. “Apologies to the Queen Mary was made up of songs that were written over a period of two, two-and-a-half years…. It felt sort of disparate to us.”
Read the rest of this story here.
Wolf Parade performs with Wintersleep at the Variety Playhouse on Mon., July 28.
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