Wolf Parade were bad on Monday night, for a lot of different reasons. It wasn’t just plain badness, it was a kind of compound badness, where every factor of the performance combined with each other to make a bigger, worser (is that even a word?) whole. Like Voltron, but terrible.
Starting off with the sound, it was flat and lifeless. It sounded like a indistinct, dull blur, and almost completely sans vocals (maybe a blessing in disguise, after some further home listening). OK so on its own bad sound’s not necessarily a dealbreaker if they really sell it up there on stage. They didn’t though. The band stayed rooted to the spot the entire night and looked like they were already in the bus on the road to the next gig. Total sense of show-by-numbers, no spirit, no moments.
Then you get to the songs themselves and now the flaws are starting to add up. Plainly said, the songs sucked. Wolf Parade exist in a weird no-man’s land between a band who really rocks and a band who’s challenging and interesting, and occupy neither camp. Wolf Parade are like a guy who’s smart enough to know he belongs in a better job but not smart enough to make it happen, stuck in some unsuccessful middle-ground. Wolf Parade don’t feel like a real band, they feel like cardboard cutouts spontaneously generated to fill a niche that opened up some years ago which demanded new rock music that people could listen to and still feel superior about. Wolf Parade, ugh.
The largely immobile crowd seemed to be trying desperately hard to enjoy what they were hearing in the face of the band’s plainly obvious failure. Good for them if they succeeded, I guess. The honest truth was though that this overwrought yet undercooked, tedious performance could not have ended soon enough.
Marcus O’Sullivan
