Wolf Parade's Expo 86

Wolf Parade have come a long way since their debut ages ago. Gone is the noisy tuneless, Modest Mouse wanna be songs and here now are songs with actual verses, choruses, hooks, and things that keep you interested. It may have take three albums to get here but Expo 86 is a brilliant arty pop record that sounds something like a much rougher and drunker Arcade Fire. While that might be a bit of an insult to this fellow band of Canadians the direction that they've headed down on Expo 86 seems to be less racket and more art.

Wolf Parade reportedly made this record very quickly churning out songs and producing Expo 86 in under eight months. You would never know that things were put together so quickly judging by the complexity of the songs here; it's really hard to believe that this is the same band that released Apologies to Queen Mary back in 2005. Expo 86is a texturally intriguing album that weaves a tapestry of dramatic vocals, sturdy rhythms, a sense of groove, and tuneful guitars to create something that's rather riveting to listen too. "What Did My Lover Say (It Always Had To Go This Way)," is a fine example of what this band is capable of now. With a dance groove and Bloc Party like guitars layered over the hypnotic, "Oooh's" that populate the song, the tune becomes a post punk dance anthem that might be a little late to the party but is blindingly good. As if to tempt fate, Wolf Parade follow that song, with a big bombastic indie rock tune called, "Little Golden Age," which at it's heart is simple but sounds like the bounciest, largest, indie rock song you've ever heard in your life; it's so big it's dying for a festival crowd to go nuts for it.

I'm not sure what happened to Wolf Parade over the course of the two years since their second album, At Mount Zoomer but whatever it was I'm glad it did. Expo 86is a fantastic album that lays to rest the rumoured demise of the Great White North as a fertile breeding ground for artful pop. If you miss the days of slightly jagged, shrewd indie rock that want's to dance as much as it wants to contemplate its life, then you could do much worse than Wolf Parade's Expo 86. This is a fantastic album that really never loses it's head of steam that although they may have recorded Expo 86 quickly, it never lets you know that. The level of artistry and songs here, are clearly more complicated than the apparent speed of this album would ever let on and I think that's one of the reason's that it's a successful effort.