This is not a statement I make lightly. I have been lucky enough to experience great show after great show after great show, from a The Secret Machines/Kings of Leon double bill to the Decemberists, from Beirut to Ted Leo to Sufjan Stevens, but Spencer Krug an
d Don Broeckner blew them all out of the water. From the opening salvo of "Language City" through a redonculous encore (which included a very much shouted for "I'll Believe In Anything", a standout in a show filled with standouts) Wolf Parade proved that they may very well be the best live musicians in existence. They don't put on a show like the Flaming Lips, and it was by no means a perfect concert (some of the slower songs disrupted the energy and 'Kissing the Beehive' got a little self-indulgent in the middle, but we'll get back to that in a second) but the unbelievable energy that they poured into almost every single song is, in my experience, pretty unique. Some shows have come close, but I don't think I have EVER been as winded as I was by the time the encore came around. There wasn't enough air in my lungs to both dance and shout, and so I had to economize. Luckily for me, I managed to make it through some of the best live songs I have ever, well, experienced. I had no idea 'Grounds for Divorce' would become a seminal concert moment for me, like seeing Sufjan play 'Chicago' IN Chicago or being hugged by a complete stranger in between encores at the aforementioned Flaming Lips show. Even the songs I had expected would become branded into my memory seemed better than I could have possibly imagined.Surprisingly, I even enjoyed most of 'Kissing the Beehive', a song which usually begins to bore my by minute 4. While there was a stretch in the middle that seemed a little self-indulgent, the song translates much, much better live than it does on record. Part of the reason for this may be that it is a unique piece within the Wolf Parade canon. While the best Wolf Parade songs
are very much Wolf Parade songs (One of the major complaints leveled at the band's newest record, At Mount Zoomer, is that several of the tracks sound very much like they belong to one of the group's many [also wonderful] side-projects , although every song on the album is excellent), most of them are either 'Spencer' or 'Dan' songs. This particular jam, however, uses the vocal talents of both the gravelly Krug and the smooth Broeckner, and after seeing one or the other take the lead on song after excellent song, 'Kissing the Beehive' is a statement of band unity like no other. It's as if they knew what charges were going to be brought against them, and they prepared a perfect response, a response which allowed them to charge into the encore of three tunes from their first album in a way that may not have been possible otherwise. And it was brilliant. All of it.(Perhaps I'm being slightly hyperbolic. But only slightly)
Mp3 Language City- Wolf Parade
MOV I'll Believe In Anything - Wolf Parade
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