Noise

Wolf Parade’s soars back into space on ‘Cry Cry Cry’

Image

Four stars

Wolf Parade Cry Cry Cry

Wolf Parade marked its 2016 return to the stage—after five years off—with the simultaneous release of a four-song EP, a clear declaration that the band’s second phase would be no mere nostalgia tour. Fifteen months later, the Canadian quartet has bolstered that case with Cry Cry Cry, its first album since 2010’s Expo 86.

Where last year’s self-titled EP showed promise, that songwriters Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner might return to the heady heights of their mid-2000s heyday, Cry immediately fulfills it. The 11-track affair lifts off with two stirring fist-pumpers—Krug’s “Lazarus Online” (“Let’s fight/Let’s rage against the night”) and Boeckner’s “You’re Dreaming” (“Everybody cries/Everybody needs some comfort”)—and continues colliding clever melodies, pulsating rhythms and lyrics alternately poignant and cryptic. As their track times suggest, the six-minute “Baby Blue” and 6:40 “Weaponized” pair as the LP’s centerpieces, the former a Krug composition in the tradition of his manic, swirling classics and the latter a Boeckner piece that starts as a straight-ahead rocker before slowing to become a grandiose anthem. Meet the new Wolf Parade … even better than the old Wolf Parade?

Tags: Music, Album
Share
Photo of Spencer Patterson

Spencer Patterson

Get more Spencer Patterson
Top of Story