Wolf Parade performed their last show (for now) in Vancouver on Monday to a room full of family, friends, and die hard fans.The indie rock band, born in British Columbia and reared in Montreal, played its last show in Vancouver on Monday night, delivering a set nearly two hours long to a crowd filled with friends and family.
It is, technically, an “indefinite hiatus.” But for a band that’s always been loose – the group was formed in a swirling rush by Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner in 2003 to open for then-unknown Arcade Fire – it feels like an ending, the conclusion of a musical collaboration that has spanned eight years.
“There are no future plans,” Krug said Monday. “This could be the last show. We’re not so naive to think it couldn’t be. We’re also not so naive to be so black-and-white as to say it definitely is our last show, you know?”
The band members’ many side projects, which percolated through Wolf Parade’s entire span, now come to the fore. Krug will put out a record this summer and tour under his solo name, Moonface. At the same time, Boeckner, with his wife Alexei Perry, will release and tour their third Handsome Furs album.
“All of our hearts are, at least creatively, they’re split into different spaces right now, that Wolf Parade is not in,” said Krug. “We love each other like brothers. We’re not doing this because there’s any bad blood or anything but, creatively, it feels like it’s time to stop.”
While the band is known for its place in the Montreal indie-rock firmament, where it came to prominence alongside Arcade Fire in the mid-2000s, the real roots are in small-town British Columbia, the wellspring of the twin-headed hydra that is Wolf Parade. Guitarist Boeckner grew up in Lake Cowichan on Vancouver Island. Keyboard player Krug is from Penticton in the Okanagan Valley. (Dante DeCaro, also from the island, on guitar and bass and drummer/producer Arlen Thompson, from Victoria, round out the lineup.)
At the Commodore Ballroom Monday night, a wave of cheers brought Wolf Parade back to the stage for the first encore. Boeckner dedicated This Heart’s On Fire, from the band’s first record, 2005’s Apologies to the Queen Mary, to his father, who was standing at stage left. The song, set amid the wake of Boeckner’s mother at the family home in Cowichan, recovers from loss with the repeated incantation, “It’s getting better all the time” – especially rousing on Monday.
Several songs later, Krug dedicated one to his father – also in the wings of the stage – the opener from Apologies, the arrhythmic pounding of You Are a Runner and I Am My Father’s Son.
During the 17-song gig, selections split evenly from all three records, Krug told the mostly adoring crowd it would be the last one, at least for long time. “We’re glad it’s back home in Vancouver,” said Krug, 34.
In their mid-20s, both Krug and Boeckner drifted east from B.C. to the burgeoning Montreal scene, just as Arcade Fire’s Win Butler came north, from Texas by way of Boston.
Like Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade quickly made a name. Three short releases spurred feverish anticipation for Apologies. It was acclaimed by critics and then short-listed in 2006 for the first Polaris Prize.
Unlike Arcade Fire, the ascent stalled. Side projects beckoned and the second Wolf Parade full-length release didn’t arrive until three years after the first. At Mount Zoomer didn’t garner the same adoration.
It was much the same for last year’s Expo 86. Reviews were mixed and only the devotees really embraced it. As Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs rolled towards album of the year at the Grammys, Expo 86 – a record without grandiose themes – secured a more lowly accolade, voted one of the most underrated records of 2010 in a Pitchfork readers poll (along with other new releases from once-exalted names such as Sufjan Stevens and Spoon).
“Commercially, Wolf Parade plateaued early on, and stayed on the same level, in terms of making a living of it,” Krug said. “And where we plateaued is a very comfortable, nice place to be.”
The indefinite hiatus was first floated last November after a Toronto show, the last of a long tour. The band said there’d be a couple more gigs this year. The penultimate performance was at the Sasquatch festival in Washington State last weekend.
While Monday night was a celebration, it also felt like something had been extinguished, even compared with a recent show last summer, a sweat-soaked performance in Vancouver. A second encore closed the story, a singalong of Dylan’s Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. A hundred fans crowded onstage on Krug’s invitation.
But finally it was words from songs at the start of the night that particularly rang.
“What is passed/ Just leave it behind,” in Boeckner’s show-opening Soldier’s Grin, seemed to be sung with a subtle exclamation point.
Then, in Krug’s revered Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts, it was the escalating existential chant that leapt from Krug’s frame, long hair obscuring his face, crouched over his keyboards even more than usual, to the delight of the crowd:
“I got a hand/ So I got a fist/ So I got a plan/ It’s the best that I can do/ Now we’ll say it’s in God’s hands/ Well God doesn’t always have the best goddamned plans, does he?”
Setlist
Soldier’s Grin
What Did My Lover Say? (It Always Had to Go This Way)
Palm Road
Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts
Ghost Pressure
Oh You, Old Thing
Fine Young Cannibals
Cloud Shadow on the Mountain
Shine A Light
I’ll Believe in Anything
Little Golden Age
Kissing the Beehive
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This Heart’s on Fire
California Dreamer
Language City
You Are A Runner
Fancy Claps
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Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
