Biting Back

Montreal indie-rock quintet Wolf Parade — relentlessly championed by Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock — made a huge splash in 2005 with its exhilarating debut full-length, Apologies to the Queen Mary. Three years later, the band is back with At Mount Zoomer.

Over the phone, Wolf Parade drummer Arlen Thompson gives us his take on some of Zoomer's reviews, although he admits he doesn't read too many of them:

"While recording the followup to its lauded debut album, Apologies to the Queen Mary, Wolf Parade sent a note to Sub Pop saying there were no singles on the new record. That's a lie. At Mount Zoomer may be prog-damaged and pervasively weird, but there are at least three or four potential singles here." — The Hartford Courant

Arlen Thompson: Yeah, the "no singles" thing seems to come up a lot. That was put in the bio, and I don't think the letter had as much weight to it as it's being made out to be. I mean, a lot of it was us wanting to make an album that's more complete, and it does kinda feel like one fluid gesture as opposed to more of a collection of songs like Apologies was, so there's some truth to it. But it wasn't any sort of hard edict that we laid on Sub Pop before we handed in the record.

"How you will, or will not, take to the book-learnin' Canadian indie-rock five-piece Wolf Parade's second album depends entirely on your relationship to the art of the yelp. If you have an itch you can never scratch for whoopingly hollered songs about radio waves being 'like snow,' then Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner's band will be like a welcome ice cube on a mosquito bite. If you don't, they will become the mosquito." — The Guardian

AT: [Laughs] Yeah, the British don't like us very much. Maybe 'cause we're from a former colony that's doing good or something — upstaging the motherland. I dunno, people think we're pretty yelpy — I don't get that. I guess Spencer's a little yelpy, but Dan's more of a crooner, I've always thought.