Wolf Parade's sound getting bigger, better

[Apologies for the dearth of material here recently; this blog has been in organizational rehab. It'll be back strong, and soon. Meanwhile, contributor Jeff Weiss sends us this memorandum from Thursday night's show at the El Rey. I love it when he says "leviathan":]

Writing about music means you go to a lot of shows, two or three a week, 52 weeks a year, the wide majority of them decent but unspectacular. Thursday night was not one of them. It was one of those rare evenings that validates a music obsession, a crystalline burst of clarity intimating to you that you’re in the presence of real greatness.

Scoff all you want, last night Wolf Parade proved once again what anyone who has caught them live already knows: They are the real deal. Testing out material from their yet-untitled sophomore Sub Pop effort, Wolf Parade displayed exactly how much they’ve grown since emerging from Montreal a few years ago burdened by seemingly insurmountable levels of hype. And the new songs? Well, let’s just say these aren’t the twitchy yelp-rock that the band blew up on, they’re leviathan prog-rock behemoths, full of arena-rock drums, itchy keyboard riffs and even beefy guitar solos.

The secret to the band’s success is the dynamic between its songwriters Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug. Boeckner stands center-stage, heavily tatted and emaciated in his skinny jeans, veins bulging out of his neck like Springsteen in a post-Modest Mouse world. Spencer Krug sits off to the left, sitting on his knees, pounding away at an old beat-up keyboard, looking like the proverbial boy next door, if the boy next door had a penchant for writing eight minute symphonies about graveyards, snakes and angels. In their solo projects, both Boeckner and Krug showcase exactly how talented they individually are, but in Wolf Parade, their strengths seemingly fill in the other’s weaknesses, Boeckner’s arena-rock sensibilities reining in Krug’s eccentricity, Krug’s avant-garde genius shaping the Boeckner tunes into menacing anthems.

In the course of the 80-minute performance, the band played roughly a half dozen new tunes. They were all woozy, bruising and beautiful. It’s still a bit early, but if these songs are any indication, Wolf Parade will not only going to avoid the sophomore slump, but they seem to be shaping up to be one of the best bands of their generation.