Wolf Parade follow-up their 2005 debut album ‘Apologies to the Queen Mary’ with ‘At Mount Zoomer’, which was recorded and engineered by drummer Arlen Thompson.

The band discarded four or five songs left over from their first album for being too samey and instead committed itself to a period of experimentation and improvisational sessions in the Montreal church owned by The Arcade Fire.

The end result show that this brave move was definitely the right one as ‘At Mount Zoomer’ is a far superior record than the hit-and-miss Queen Mary.

The new album is made up of a complex matrix of components and modules that, thanks to the collective efforts of each band member, never feels laboured or fussy.

From the nimble opening strains of ‘Soldier’s Grin’ to the eleven-minute aggro dirge of ‘Kissing the Beehive’, they hand authority of the songs around among them with a refreshing absence of ownership.

This collaboration isn’t just a work ethic — the band’s many offshoots, side projects, and domestic ventures have taken each of them far from their home base in Montreal for extended periods, compressing their time as a functioning unit.

‘At Mount Zoomer’ sees Wolf Parade working devoid of ego and could possibly be filed under ‘prog rock’ for its lack of sugary cast-offs for the short-attention-span set.

This effort by Wolf Parade is the sound of a band edging forward into a wispy darkness, one hand reaching out, the other firmly clutching the past. A modern day ‘Marquee Moon’!

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