Ruminations on Rocking Out: A Review of Wolf Parade Live
by Daniel Patrick Schmergel

The thing was, I needed to rock out. I mean, I needed it bad. The way junkies need a fix, the way Picasso needed to paint, the way a Long Island girl needs to shop. You know what I mean, right? That deep in your bones, "Christ I want it now" quasi-sexual desire. Okay, I’m settling down. No reason to call the authorities.

But I really did need to rock out. I love to rock out. If you go to indie rock shows in New York City you may have seen me before. I’m the white—oh so very white—short, fat dude dancing with all the grace of an epileptic. (By the way, I swear, if I get one letter about “why are you being mean to epileptics?” I will flip the fuck out. I know people who are epileptic; it’s a horrible disease. A seizure is still not a graceful physical movement. Enough said.)

Anyway, the point is I look like a jackass rocking out. Allow me to paint you a picture with words: I do this air guitar thing, which is just so wrong. It looks more like I’m trying to flagellate myself; it certainly looks nothing like actual guitar playing. This is despite the shiny red guitar that sits untouched in my living room. Oh well. Up above the arms, I’ve got the whole Beavis and Butthead slam dance motion in action. I tell you: I wake up with such a headache the next morning. But it’s below the waist that the true tragedy occurs; I swing my hips in a circle like a sixteen year-old at the prom. Finally, I sing loudly, and alternate my air guitar action with what is supposed to be air drumming, but what most of my friends agree looks more like air-maracas (which, really, not enough people do). Oh, and none of this occurs in rhythm to the music.

But I don’t care that I make a spectacle of myself. When I was a teenager and first started going to concerts I was too terrified of the crowds to see most of my favorite bands of the time. Nirvana, Green Day, Smashing Pumpkins, Oasis (okay, maybe not them)—these bands’ audiences moshed, a pastime I still think is both frightening and absurd. I’m not down with that. However, when I got to college and started going to indie shows, I was shocked by how sedate the crowds were. I don’t think most of them even blinked, and you could often glimpse a sliver of drool at the corner of an indie fan’s mouth. At first I was thrilled—no threat of bodily harm! But, pretty quickly, I got bored. I may not want to slam dance someone to the floor, but I like to move at a show. Otherwise, what are you there for?

In the five years I’ve been living in New York, as we moved from the dull scene to the garage rock scene to the dance punk scene, the crowds here have gotten better. Moreover, a lot of electronica fans (and I’m talking about good electronica fans; not the guys in Versace shirts buttoned down to their navel, reeking in Gaultier cologne while waiting on line at Limelight) have gotten absorbed into the indie music scene, further improving “crowd movement.”

Sorry, I lost the plot and got way off course here. (And now I’m mixing metaphors, goddamn!) Let me take my map out…ah, yes, there we were:

I needed to rock out.

And there I was at the Wolf Parade show this past Sunday, April 9, in Webster Hall. I don’t love Webster Hall; the fact that it shares space with a strip club is just the beginning of its issues, but it’s a better venue, with a better crowd, than a lot of spots in New York. And it was Wolf Parade! I love Wolf Parade. Not to be one of those asshole “I knew about it before you did” people, but I had seen the band open for Modest Mouse at Webster more than a year earlier at a “secret show.” Without knowing a single song beforehand, and with the place only half-filled, the Wolf boys blew me off to fucking Mars. I immediately got their EP, which at the time could only be ordered from this independent record store in Vancouver. I became obsessed with them, and listened to the album, crudely recorded though it was, incessantly, until the band’s full-length debut came out this October. At first, I had been disappointed by the full-length; it reworked a lot of the songs from the EP that I already loved, and that’s always a difficult adjustment to make. But, eventually, I fell even more madly in love with Apologies to the Queen Mary than the eponymous EP, and the album soundtracked much of my fall and winter.

I had a good fall and winter. A lot of the reason for that was this girl I started dating, who shall remain nameless for now. Problem was, this new lady of mine was the recent former girlfriend of one of my (now former) best friends, and the best friend of one of my (long-ago) ex-girlfriends. None of us were speaking, because I had committed the worst betrayal of loyalty a friend can commit. How does this figure into the Wolf Parade show? Well, these former friends of mine, who I hadn’t seen in months, were going to be at the show. I knew this for a fact.

On top of that, I had just returned hours before from Bloomington, Indiana. I had been visiting the Hoosier state because the lady had just been accepted to the prestigious Indiana University Creative Writing MFA program, and I had traveled there with the expectation that I might relocate with her. This exciting, but scary, prospect was looming in my mind the whole weekend. And, when I returned from Bloomington and got “New York, New York” stuck in my head immediately upon arrival into my fair city, I became even more anxious.

All of these anxieties were informing my state of mind at the show—paradoxically making me less able to rock out, while increasing the very need to do so. As I stood there, waiting for Wolf Parade to take the stage, scanning the faces in the crowd for people I loved but now hated me, I wondered if I shouldn’t just flee the room.

But before I could, Wolf Parade came on. An excruciating equipment malfunction delay tried the rest of my patience. That’s it, I thought, I have to get out of here. And then they started playing.

Things kicked off with a song I didn’t recognize, so I’m pretty sure it was new. It was probably the prettiest Wolf Parade song I’ve ever heard, this gorgeous slow melody that climbed to a crescendo. And then, as the band launched into “Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts”, I felt my conscious mind let go, and my body began to do its thing.

The band didn’t let me down. “Sons and Daughters” was followed by “Shine a Light,” which quickly transitioned into my favorite Wolf Parade song, “Grounds for Divorce”. I forgot about Bloomington and betrayal, and joined Wolf Parade as they cried out:

I got a plan
It's the best that I can do
Now we'll say it's in God's hands
But God doesn't always have the best goddamn plans, does he?

Truer words may have never been committed to a rock song. The crowd around me was shaking its booties too. In fact, the women to my right made me think I had been transported to Shea Stadium circa 1965. They shrieked, made catcalls to the “hunks” in the band and danced like schoolgirls. It was awesome.

Midway through the set I decided I wanted to write this article. Lacking my Blackberry, I had no way of taking notes. So I resorted to the lamest note-taking of the digital age: text messaging. Here is a transcription of the series of text messages I sent to my friend Ann, who was at the show with me:

New good sons shined grounds new father Fast Modern New spacey pretty oh come on
We built xtra riff hearts on Believe in New jumpy long alien bridge dinner bells
And you love until 4 until it all goes away.

Can someone please send the Pulitzer committee my address?

After “Grounds for Divorce,” I was afraid the band, like a fifteen-year-old virgin, had shot its load too soon. I needn’t have worried. A lackluster new song was followed by “You are a Runner and I am my Father’s Son,” which was looser and faster than it is on record. At the close of the song, with the piano pounding and Spencer Krug crying out “I am my father’s son” over and over again, the song morphed into rave-up number “Fancy Claps,” which was even more energetic live.

It wasn’t all perfect. The vocals lacked the punch they have on record, and even seemed strained and distant at times. The tempo was off in some of the numbers, and the band didn’t always seem in sync. Overall, the show wasn’t nearly as good as the one I had seen a year before. Previously, I had been most impressed by how the band coupled its outrageous enthusiasm with utter precision. But at this show, it often felt like only one of Wolf Parade’s dueling personalities was allowed to be on stage at a time.

Nonetheless, when the band launched into “This Heart’s on Fire” I lost myself in it, shouting the lyrics alongside my fellow concert goers. The encore was lackluster, but with the last song, the boys of Wolf Parade brought an unexpected urgency to slow burner “Dinner Bells.” Spencer added the closing lines:

And you love
And you love
And you love
And you love
Until it all goes away.

As I exited the venue to these lyrics, I couldn’t help but think about my former friend and the woman I now loved. I couldn’t help but wonder about the loves that go away, and the ones you pray never will. I might have cried, but I had already left it all on the dance floor: a pool of sweat, the last of my pride and my anxiety.

I had gotten my “rock out.” And all was good with the world.

April 13, 2006