Wolf Parade – La Zona Rosa, Austin TX 15/11/10

Is there any band who has suffered more from the poisoning touch of blog-hype than Wolf Parade? They’ve released three overachieving albums in a row, yet the general public regards their careers post-Apologies To Queen Mary as a mere afterthought. They erupted in popularity in such a way that any chance of existing as a lasting indie-darling was squandered on the first shot. Their legacy finished within one year, their mythology closed after a single record – now in 2010 it seems even Wolf Parade know they’ll never achieve the whirlwind of goodwill that surrounded their inception, regardless of how brilliant they manage to be.

So Wolf Parade entered Austin’s La Zona Rosa for the fans that stuck through the superficial buzz – if the enveloping applause didn’t tip you off, these were the diehards. Dan Boeckner’s beanpole figure was visibly taken aback; “you guys are such sweethearts” he repeated, as the band worked through the stand-outs. Apologies and Zoomer both got solid showings – naturally with Expo material shaping up to be the majority. Boeckner and Krug traded off songs alternatively, mirroring the band’s one-of-a-kind album flow. Krug, who increasingly resembles The IT Crowd’s Douglass Reynholm towered over his electro-complex, foppy hair bouncing up and down, his casual-Friday button up drenched in sweat. Boeckner, always the band’s brow-sweat workman, never left his guitar – banging out staccato blasts of amp-busting chords, lights flickering off the gold chains around his neck. The spotlight shifted between both of the songwriters, happily trying to rock the living hell each other offstage. Boeckner’s songs ended up succeeding, but only because crunchy guitars hit an audience harder than digitized synth. Arlen Thompson and Dante DeCaro might as well have been iTunes backbeats, their presence negligible at best to the eternally dynamic relationship of the band’s anchor pieces.

The kids ate the whole set up, in case there was any doubt, people still love Wolf Parade – all of their records, not just the hip ones. Scarcely would you witness such silence between songs as you did here. The fervor of the press might have crippled the ongoing critical excitement around Wolf Parade and the blown out of proportion Montreal scene in general, but this band still has songs. Songs that can ignite a standing room in central Austin on a weeknight – and as long as they can keep that up, they’ll never need any of that hype they were blessed (and cursed) with ever again.