Monday, August 20, 2007

Wolf Parade @Warsaw, Aug. 19th

Earlier this summer, Julie1 had mentioned her interest in catching Wolf Parade, and when tickets re-appeared on Ticketbastard on Friday, I thought sure, why not? Um, $11.05 in service fees for a $20.00 ticket, that's why not!

Anyway, I figured at least I'll only drop $5.00 on dinner. Can't really beat the Warsaw Special with those yummy pickles and help yourself condiments including applesauce and sour cream! It certainly made my last visit to Warsaw for Wilco awesome.

We positioned ourselves decently close and center just before Wolf Parade was to hit the stage. Everything pretty much went downhill from there.
For someone who had little expectations about this show going in, I walked away surprisingly disappointed. Didn't even stay for the encore.

While on their album, Apologies to the Queen Mary, they may have shown promise, their live performance suffered from a lack of cohesiveness. Perhaps it was the new material that slowed them down. Or their audio setup difficulties. I found myself searching the whole time for any little moment to latch onto, and really nothing grabbed me.

As Wolf Parade traded off between their two lead singers, it resulted in a disjointed feeling, as though they were attempting multiple types of sounds. Like we were at a high school battle of the bands, and they were on stage going, okay, okay, what can we play next....okay, let's do this one! and then they'd play a song, and go, okay, it's your turn! It felt very slapped together and thoughtless.

The band also had very little stage presence and connection with the audience. Julie1 thought for a fledgling band with only one full (albeit good) album, they didn't do a very good job of playing to the crowd. The only consistency I observed was the identical Yeahhh! this annoying woman would yell behind me at the conclusion of every song. The only glimpse of their greatness as a live band I got was when they played "I'll Believe in Anything" which got the crowd going, but then the following song killed any momentum they might have had.

Oh well. I was not very impressed at all.

Dan Boeckner, doing his best Steve Buscemi imitation

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

yeah, this show was beyond disappointing. they somehow managed to do everything wrong... sounded awful, acted like assholes, and dismissively flubbed thru their own music as if bored.

but i love the record. hopefully they'll evolve as performers and lose the who gives a shit attitude. i'm willing to give them another shot at some point... solo, of course!