Canadian indie rock band Wolf Parade may not be well known down under, but with the release of their third studio album, Expo 86, and a potential tour here early next year (fingers crossed!) that is all just about to change. Adam Monkhouse caught up with drummer Arlen Thompson for a chat about what makes the band tick.

Wolf Parade had an interesting beginning, tell us how the band came together.

It came together pretty quick, kind of out of the blue. From my side of things, I got a phone call from Spencer (Krug) basically saying that him and Dan (Boeckner) had been working on some songs and they have a show coming up and they asked me if I wanted to play, and that show happened to be in under a week or something. So I ended up rehearsing with them maybe a day before the first show, and the day off the show and that’s how it started.

Something obviously worked though because you guys have been together now for a few years.

It was just one of those things, as soon as we sat down and started playing music you could really tell it was something that was really happening, and everyone was really on the same page musically, and it was going to be something good.

How has your music developed over the course of the three studio albums?

It’s hard to really tell what you’re doing, trying to get outside yourself, but I think our songs kind of slowly evolved to be a bit denser, and over the years as we have become more confident in playing our instruments and writing songs. So I think we are delving deeper into what some might call psychedelic, but a bit deeper, a bit denser kind of material while still trying to keep things little dancey and a little fun.

Do you find that you draw influences from other bands or do you forge your own sound?

I’m always listening to music, and I think with this band everyone has pretty different tastes and what everyone’s into at any given time. I tend to listen to a lot of 60s psych stuff and I got really into early afro beat but I don’t know how that really comes out in the music I make. In other ways I think we’re just four individuals who have really disparate tastes and are trying to do our own thing.

Tell us about the process of recording the new record.

It was a really organic process, we tried to keep things really simple and keep the production simple and we really wanted to capture what we do live on to record and not to have too much of the process of making a record get in the way. So we recorded everything together live off the floor and tried to keep all the overdubs to a minimum. We really wanted to keep the songs fresh and a lot of the ideas from getting too thought out.

Are you planning to tour to promote the new album?

We’re going to head out in about two weeks and start playing across North America and Canada and then we’re going to hit Europe and probably America again, and then hopefully in our winter, around January, we can play Australia and Japan.

Have you been to Australia before?

No we’ve never been to Australia, but it’s a place I’ve always wanted to go to, so I’m pretty excited. I’ve always thought Australians and Canadians are kind of like cousins, there are a lot of similarities.

What has been your most memorable touring experience?

It’s hard to tell, they all kind of blend in. I always seem to have fun in certain cities, like Helsinki always seems to be a really fun place or Berlin. There are lots of good cities to play. One kind of weird experience of tour was taking a ferry from Helsinki which I thought was going to sink at one point, it was kind of terrifying.

Is touring all about working hard or do you guys like to party?

I think we kind of mix it up, I think we like to make it not all about business when we’re on tour. Maybe try and take a day off here or there in somewhere neat. If it’s all business on tour I think you go kind of mental.

What can we expect from the live show?

I think the album translates pretty well, it’s one of the things we tried to do, as we tried to keep the production pretty sparse. Maybe the songs will have a bit more energy to them, and of course when you have a good crowd with a nice reaction you always tend to play a little bit louder and get a little bit faster and try to keep it fun.


Expo 86 is out now on Sub Pop Records.