Up Close: Wolf Parade

One of Montréal's most exciting new indie bands, Wolf Parade have a habit of winning new fans wherever they go. The music has been described as a mixture of Hot Hot Heat, The White Stripes and Arcade Fire - and the heart-wrenching vocals and hyperactive percussion will soon have you howling along, desperate to join the pack…[ed. Admit it - you'd have used a wolf pun too]. The band's lead singer, Dan Boeckner tells us about the birth of a new album and about Finland as well.

Before you were booked to come and play Iceland Airwaves, had you ever heard of it before?

No, actually, I'd never heard of Iceland Airwaves before.

Now you've had the chance to research it a bit more, are there any of the other bands coming this year that you're desperate to see?

I'd really, really like to see Islands play. We saw them play last year, here in Montréal and they're friends of ours - but their live set's really amazing. And I want to check out some of the local Icelandic bands. You know four or five months ago I did a tour in Finland with my other band and we played with some local bands there. One thing that's nice about being in a band that travels in Scandinavia is that you get to hear a lot of other music that you wouldn't get to hear staying in North America.

I suppose the same is true of Europe generally?

Yeah, absolutely - there's a lot of stuff, especially from the UK that we would normally only hear about after the fact.

Your band, Wolf Parade has been together for around three years now. What are you up to at the moment - are you recording anything, or are you touring mostly?

Well, I think the Icelandic show is going to mark the last show that we do before we start recording for our second album here in Montréal over the holidays, so everything's really busy right now - but it's good.

So have you written many of the songs yet?

Yeah, we've been writing since we recorded the last record. We probably have about 12 or 13 new songs - but people have heard some of them live. We'll probably get rid of half of those and write another six.

How long are you staying over here for?

I think the rest of the band are just staying for like three days - so just fly in and play the show. But my fiancée and I are probably going to end up staying for about a week and just travel around the whole island. I've always wanted to go there.

In that case I hope you have a really good stay. Thanks a lot for your time.

No problem. Thanks.

Alex Elliott