Wolf Parade: At Mount Zoomer

The cover-art for an album can tell you a lot. In the case of pop music it proclaims "Hey! Look how pretty I am", in the case of mainstream rap it tells you "Observe how I keep it real despite oodles of cash and/or women". In the world of Wolf Parade, it is proudly emblazoned with an allusion to the album's major weakness.

"At Mount Zoomer" is fronted by a depiction of two artists at war, and although it's one of the good wars which results in hugs and puppies and the like, nonetheless, there are two distinct factions at work here.

While Spencer Krug moonlights with Sunset Rubdown, Dan Boeckner spends his downtime in the guise of Handsome Furs, further building their distinct personas as songwriters in their own right. When they come together for Wolf Parade, for the most part, it still plays like a marriage in crisis, with one partner always in the other room.

With Krug and Broecker alternating vocal and lyrical duties in a one-two fashion you receive a very two-tiered system. Whilst Krug proves himself the more accomplished composer, Broecker excels instead in the lyrical department, twisting each of his songs into some weird mesh of repeated imagery and continued themes. It's only when they come together on the grandstanding finale "Kissing the Beehive" that the true power of the Wolf Parade becomes startlingly obvious.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. With a "Soldier's Grin" is how it begins, a song, once again of two distinct halves. Commencing with a jaunty pace which would have made former producer Isaac Brock proud the bold decision is made to nuke the buoyancy during the final act. As the charred embers of the former things scatter on the back of a bleak, unrelenting wind, a decidedly darker animal begins to emerge from the dystopian wreckage.

While many have toyed with the concept of dark themes paired with upbeat music, it takes skill to pull off and the greater majority of the time both writers are successful. On mid-point track "California Dreamer" piercing guitar licks spray across the song, filled out with off-beat upstrokes and wildly captivating choruses, whilst in the meantime Krug concerns himself with the tale of the end of a shining star, a goddess past the sell-by-date "Do the young stay pretty, do the pretty stay quick? / You know, but you never surrender / The city doesn't belong to you anymore / California dreamer"

For all its merits, "At Mount Zoomer" may easily be described as the best split-album of a all time, but when "Kissing the Beehive" manages to obtain a measure of perfection throughout its lengthy (but could of been longer and we'd still be ecstatic) eleven minute runtime you cannot help but wonder what could have been were these two exceptional men to have combined their collective genius to fuller effect.