Without Modest Mouse, there would be no Wolf Parade. At least not the dripping-with-critic-slobber indie-rock juggernaut they’ve become.

Most Crawdaddy! readers probably know the story by now. Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock took a shining to Atlas Strategic, the British Columbia band that singer/guitarist Dan Boeckner played in before he moved to Montreal and helped form Wolf Parade. Acting as A&R rep, Brock signed Wolf Parade to Sub Pop in 2004 and produced much of their first album, Apologies to the Queen Mary.

The album was devoured by people like Pitchfork’s Brandon Stosuy, who gave it a ridiculous 9.2 and gushed, “In a few years, other folks will still remember where they were when they first heard Apologies to the Queen Mary.”

Faster than you can say “poutine,” Wolf Parade was the darling of the genre, nearly as feted as their Montreal pal, Arcade Fire.

I considered writing one of these columns pitting Wolf Parade vs. Arcade Fire, but since I consider the latter entirely overrated, I didn’t bother. Not so with Modest Mouse, whom I fell for upon hearing their 1997 sophomore effort, The Lonesome Crowded West. Songs like “Convenient Parking” and “Cowboy Dan” expertly combined gritty production, accessible riffs, and semi-sarcastic lyrics that revealed angst and suffering below. Their 2000 follow-up, The Moon & Antarctica, smoothed out the production and ramped up the sincerity, reducing me to a quivering pile of thrift store-bought pleated pants and mock turtlenecks. (Meaning, I liked it.)

I stayed on board through 2004’s Good News for People Who Love Bad News, rejoicing when the underground favorites scored a break-out hit with the whimsical stomper “Float On.” It pushed the album’s sales over 1.5 million, and for their 2007 release, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, they had the clout to enlist former Smiths guitarist, Johnny Marr. Brock, meanwhile, started his own label, Glacial Pace, signing Mason Jennings and Love as Laughter. His greatest success as a king-maker, however, came from launching Wolf Parade into orbit.

Yet, the strange thing for me was that, though Wolf Parade would later become one of my favorite bands, I didn’t like Apologies to the Queen Mary when it came out. Though it’s grown on me, a major problem remains—it sounds too much like Modest Mouse. From the first yelping, tortured bars of “You Are a Runner and I Am My Father’s Son” through the wailing, dissonant “Dinner Bells”, it consistently evokes “the lonesome crowded sound,” as Stosuy described it.

But while other critics didn’t subtract points for this, to me it spoke to a bigger problem—that the band had not yet come unto its own. I’m not the only person who thought this. Wolf Parade co-frontman Spencer Krug told me the same thing. “I listen to some of those songs off Apologies to the Queen Mary and I’m like, ‘I can’t believe I wrote them,’” he said. “I don’t even know where I started. Some of them are so convoluted; I have no idea what I was doing.”

Though he didn’t slam Brock or Brock’s production, he added that employing an outside producer probably wasn’t the right move. “We probably just weren’t ready to work with anyone at that point,” he said.

The group later took matters into their own hands, releasing the self-produced At Mount Zoomer earlier this year. Despite its crummy title, the album is headed straight to the top of my year-end best albums list. Trying to explain why I love this album is like trying to explain why I love my girlfriend—it seems so blatantly obvious that I almost feel like I shouldn’t have to.

But, if I must… it sounds like something I would have recorded to entertain myself, had I the musical acumen and talent for elegant, cryptic lyricism. The album is dramatic without being melodramatic. Like a really good Michael Mann film, it’s immediately accessible but can be experienced over and over, a guilty pleasure but also a piece of art. Though its lyrics touch on self-doubt, relationship anxiety, and existential despair, I believe they ultimately betray a cautious optimism. On “Language City”, Boeckner sings, “I been here so long my heart is a parking lot / Hollow feet rooted to the spot,” before adding: “In a paper room / Somebody’s counting the hours.” The song seems to be about a musician on the road, who, though he’s feeling glum now, will eventually be reunited with his lady. “As if you didn’t know that it would sting,” Krug sings on the album’s 11-minute finale, “Kissing the Beehive.” “Kissing the beehive / And pissing down the mountain side in the rain.” Though perhaps one could interpret such behavior as self-destructive, to me the lines speak to testing one’s limits as a human, tasting life’s tragedy and learning to rise above it.

In any case, that the lyrics are so open to interpretation make At Mount Zoomer suitable for repeat listens, as does the innovative (yet comforting) music. Full of sparkly keys, proggy progressions, and crashing codas, it sometimes substitutes transcendent guitar riffs for choruses, and never loses its momentum. Krug and Boeckner’s delicately layered vocal and instrumental parts always keep melody at the center, ensuring the sound is both inspired and inspiring.  

In short, At Mount Zoomer is the band’s masterpiece, and Brock had nothing to do with it. (Well, nothing tangible, anyways—he did put them in a position to be able to make it, which counts for something.) Further, Modest Mouse’s latest, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank—though it impressed some critics—did very little for me. The album shows signs of life at the start with tracks like “Dashboard” and “Florida”, but on the second half loses its pulse.

This is not a slag on Brock, however. No one can stay at their creative peak forever, and 20 years from now, who knows if Wolf Parade or Modest Mouse’s best albums will hold up better. All I know is that Wolf Parade is on top of their game right now, and Modest Mouse has fallen off the mountain.

Listen: “Novocain Stain“  [youtube.com]

Watch: “Shine a Light“  [at youtube.com]

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