Wolf Parade: four on the floor

In just under four months, Wolf Parade have managed to write, record and mix their third and newest full-length album, Expo 86, since their 2005 breakthrough debut release, Apologies to the Queen Mary. We recently spoke with drummer Arlen Thompson about the band’s new album (out June 29^th) and their new line-up, in and out of the studio.

I heard that you recorded more tracks than were released.
We had like 13 or 14 songs, almost 70 minutes of music that we had to pare down to a lean 55 minutes. We managed to get into a really productive time and got a lot of material together. It was pretty hard deciding what would stay and what would go, but for us it was probably one of the most productive times for our band.

What are you planning on doing with the leftover songs?
We were thinking of doing an EP or maybe a split record with another band. We’ll figure out what to do with the other songs maybe in the fall.

How would you describe this album compared to your first two?
I always felt that this album is in between the last record and the first record. [At Mount] Zoomer was a bit denser, but a harder listen than Apologies. I think that with Zoomer we weren’t super-comfortable in our skins as a band and that we were reacting to Apologies. This one is more melodic than MountZoomer, but still keeps with the usual dense instrumentation and lots of stuff going on. It’s definitely more rock than Apologies. We embraced the fact that we’re a rock band and figured out that what we do live is what this band is about. We wanted to keep the live energy going and try to put that down on a recording. I think it’s the best way we can work.

Do you think WP is more comfortable as a live band?
On this record we tried to avoid doing a lot of overdubs and things that we couldn’t do right on stage. So when we were arranging the songs we kept that in mind: could we do it on stage and could we present everything live? There were a few little cheats here and there, but generally the essence of the record was making it so it would sound good live. I think that it’s always been our strength, what we do live.

Hadji Bakara left the group to go educate himself in Chicago. How has that changed the band?
I think the big shift with this record is Hadji leaving but also Dante [DeCaro] coming on as a full writing member, being on every song and being part of the structure of the songs. Dante, who’s been playing with us for 4 or 5 years, has never really been on any of the records. He’s on a couple of songs on Zoomer but not as a full writing member.

Who plays the keys now that Hadji has left?
Actually, everybody except for me. Both Dan [Boeckner] and Dante play keyboards now. We actually have more synthesizers now than when Hadji was in the band, if that’s possible!

Wolf Parade
July 8-9 | Le National
1220, Ste. Catherine E.
with Moools
www.myspace.com/wolfparade