A Journey into the Wilds of Canada: Wolf Parade, Frog Eyes, Islands

It's the distortion that I love in Wolf Parade, like an aged hippy vibing out to vibrations travelling up his shins in a bus depot, I can put my fingers out and try and touch it. It's like guitars and synth with sore throats, an intense rumble that the tart voice of Spencer Krug struggles against, slinks alongside and howls above. The bludgeoning percussion tries to clear the mucus, (just listen to the intro of You Are A Runner...) but just gives it an emphatic military discipline. Like a parade. The sound's most similar to a growl; Wolf Parade worry at their instruments, shaking them ruthlessly till they squeal and shudder under teeth-like fingers and saliva-like sweat. Like a wolf, you could say. Certainly, the tone is grey and carrys the air of a threat. Let's just say you wouldn't leave your chickens out. The best of these, Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts, has some lyrics that self-propel with an almost euphoric momentum: internal rhyming kicking one line into the next, "I got a pen / So I got a fist / So I got a plan / It's the best that I can do / I would say / It's in God's hands / but God doesn't always have the best goddamn plans does he?". Almost every second word in the song has a partner-sound that follows on immediately. They somersault down the vibrations, middle-finger raised to heaven. This is all a convoluted and probably irrelevant way of saying it rocks. Hard. Get your hackles up.

Wolf Parade - You Are A Runner And I Am My Father's Son

Wolf Parade - Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts http://www.zshare.net/audio/181790975401562e/

Wolf Parade - It's a Curse http://www.zshare.net/audio/1817805286007702/

I was going to post Sunset Rubdown here, Krug’s sideband. But they’re better than an add-on, better than fatty buffalo-wings or a whispered “by the way”. In fact, I might even like them better than Wolf Parade. And the track I want to put up is so epic it deserves its own blog-chapel. So, that’ll be next.

Having said this, Krug’s other other band, Frog Eyes, can happily step in to the vacancy, fill the conservatory if we’re speaking bourgeoisie. Which is exactly the wrong language if you’re trying to get a line on Frog Eyes. They’re [whisper it] experimental. Bushels shifts tone and beat on a whim, occasionally building, occasionally lulling: the closest animal I can compare it to (Canadian indie seems attracted to animals) is a family of snakes all tied together. Some cumbersome and slow, some small and slippery, but all heading in the same direction. It’s persuasive as hell, especially around 4 minutes when lead-singer Casey Mercer starts garbling in tongues, I really like that. Then it builds slowly, like it’s lugging something heavy up a hill. Then it calms down. Then it goes…. It’s a journey, an oddly biblical one with its mutterings about bushes, internal inconsistencies and epic scale (8 minutes in total). I wouldn’t be surprised if he was jabbering away verses of Ezekiel. The last time Frog Eyes even saw the rails was long before the Tower of Babel was just a glint in the bulging eye of an arrogant man.

Frog Eyes - Bushels

http://www.zshare.net/audio/18145056abf56dfd/

Islands’s Rough Gem is more pleasant, happy, upbeat and skippy. An antidote to that burned-out prophet track of Frog Eyes. Here’s the opening verses –

The world beat you for the something nice /You worked hard, died poor /You mined what you died for / Diamonds /You can whistle my name /It's the mines, in Africa/That are to blame /You can Scoop out my brain /Shape it into an ear and then tell me your pain.

You can whistle along to that. Odd no? Maybe that’s just the beauty of Canadian bands at the moment. They odd the eyes out of everybody else.

Islands - Rough Gem

http://www.zshare.net/audio/181459516b84a695/