Wolf Parade: "Ghost Pressure" / ""What Did My Lover Say (It Always Had to Go This Way)"

It would be entirely disingenuous to act deflated by either of the new Wolf Parade tracks were one to, pencil in mouth, go down a checklist of required features (fantastical synth lines, stompy anthemics—present!), but I find myself at last succumbing to the criticisms so many laid upon the band when their last album surfaced: namely, they just sorta sound like Wolf Parade. There was a time—and by “a time” I mean “2005”—when sounding like Wolf Parade meant something Important, something post-postmodern and grubby-fingered and new. Does it still? Is it urgent?

Is there longing and hurt and hopefulness in this music, or is it just good music? Such rhetoric could go on forever, which is maybe why I leave the album reviews to the other guys. These songs sound like fun. Stately, moody fun, which might be something we need, since Spoon has abandoned their throne thereof for, like, trying to get laid, or whatever that last album was—but this also might be something Wolf Parade isn’t entirely suited for. Then again, maybe I’m playing revisionist history. Because wasn’t Apologies to the Queen Mary (2005) a grower? Didn’t we ache—

Whoa, there’s that precipice again. “What Did My Lover Say (It Always Had to Go This Way)” is an itchy Krug stomp, its hi-hats clicking in place in a way that reminds our own Dave Goldstein of Franz Ferdinand falling down a staircase. Again, telling: is that exactly a reference point we want? Is Wolf Parade still the heroic band of yore, or are these guys playing Band Hero? “Ghost Pressure” is an overwhelmingly capable more of the same, darkly sexy in the way rock songs are supposed to be. Guitars sound like guitars, which I guess is what they are also supposed to do. But didn’t they once sound like spears tossed across the globe and aimed to core our brains like apples? Didn’t this heart used to burn?

Hereby accepting reader-submitted rhetorical questions in the comments section below.