On September 27, 2005, Wolf Parade released Apologies to the Queen Mary, an album steeped in gorgeous abrasion and awful beauty. It howls and growls and snarls and explodes, a monumental release by an at-the-time nascent band made up of a bunch of extremely creative but very green young musicians.
The album, named after a drunken incident aboard an ocean liner during All Tomorrow's Parties, was the launching point for Wolf Parade, who instantly became associated with the burgeoning "Montreal scene" of the early-to-mid-aughts. They were touted as one of Canada's finest new musical exports, and immediately aroused uninspired comparisons to Arcade Fire, the Beatles and Modest Mouse, whose leader Isaac Brock not only produced Apologies, but also scouted the band for Sub Pop.
Upon its release, the album was very positively reviewed, ending up on "Best of 2005" lists and getting shortlisted for the 2006 Polaris Music Prize. In the 2005 year-end lists for this very publication, the album ended up third in both the writers' and readers' polls, and the band graced the cover of the September issue that same year. In the two decades since, it has never lost its place as a much-beloved entry in the indie rock canon, particularly when it comes to music from the 2000s.
The album's 12 songs — which tackle subjects as diverse as ghosts, divorce, burning hearts, the modern world, and believing in anything — have remained powerful and irreplaceable. And so, to celebrate its 20th anniversary, Wolf Parade are hitting the road and playing the album in full. While nostalgia may be in full effect, even for the band members themselves, its status as a stone-cold classic is well-earned.
On the eve of setting out on the Queen Mary, Exclaim! sat down — or should we say, drove around — with co-founder, keyboardist and co-lead vocalist Spencer Krug to chat about the band's history, their comedy-of-errors early days, recording with Brock, signing to Sub Pop, and those pesky Lennon–McCartney comparisons.
Hi, Spencer.
I'm driving. Are you okay if we do this while I'm driving?
Absolutely, totally fine. I kind of figured you'd have a busy couple of days before the tour starts.
Yeah, it's been a crazy week, just insane. We leave [for the tour] tomorrow, but we're doing a warmup show tonight in Nanaimo. I'm just driving to Nanaimo right now, and we've been trying to remember how to be a band. [Laughs.] And then other stuff outside of the band has been exceptionally up and down this week. There's been this real mix of deep sadness, but also joy and gratitude for having each other and our family, and then the band getting back together, and all the nostalgia that comes with playing songs that you wrote fucking 20 years ago. So it's been a weird one.
Is this the first time you're going to perform the album in full?
We did a similar thing in 2023, but just on the West Coast, in LA and San Francisco and maybe Portland and Seattle; I can't rightly remember. It was just a few shows with our old bandmate, Hadji [Bakara]. He was able to join us, and he wrote and recorded [Apologies to the Queen Mary] with us. It was cool to have him out, but he can't make it this time. Well, we couldn't get organized to invite him this time. [Laughs.] Wolf Parade has been existing as a three-piece lately, so we're playing the songs that way. It's just the three of us, just the core members [Krug, co-frontman Dan Boeckner and drummer Arlen Thompson]. A lot of the early songs were written just the three of us, so it's fun. It's just nostalgic.
Can you set the scene for that pre-Apologies run-up? What bands you guys were playing in, how you met Dan, how the band started, and what your goals were as a band when you first started playing music together.
I moved to Montreal in 2001, and Dan moved there in 2002. We had worked together in a restaurant in Victoria, BC, called the Bent Mast. It was a pub, and we were both grunts in the kitchen, and that's how we met and became friends. One of the things we bonded over was a love of the same kind of music and both being in bands. At the time, he was in a band called Atlas Strategic, and I was in a band called Frog Eyes. Victoria is not that big; everyone knew each other, and we'd go to each other's shows. And then we talked about starting a band together, but then I decided to move to Montreal, so I did that. And then for completely unrelated reasons, Dan moved out a year later, so we picked the conversation back up around 2003.
He started coming over to my apartment, and we started jamming out little things in my bedroom, just guitar and keyboard. I think the first song we ever did was "This Heart's on Fire," which is off [Apologies], and it was just guitar and keyboard, and we we're like, "Oh, that's cool. This could be a song. We could be a band." But we didn't have any shows or anything. And I think, originally, there was no plan for me to sing in the band, because I'd never sung in a band. I was just gonna be the keyboard player like I was in Frog Eyes, and Dan was gonna be the guitarist and singer, like he was in Atlas Strategic. The first couple songs were written with that intention. And then I very quickly thought that I wanted to sing too, because I was starting Sunset Rubdown, and I thought, maybe these could be Wolf Parade songs and I could sing.
We had maybe half a dozen ideas put together, and we got offered this show opening for a Swedish band called Melancholia or something, and Arcade Fire was on that bill too, way before they were famous. This is in Montreal [around] 2003, and this guy was like, "I heard you have a band — you want to play the show?" And we didn't have a band yet, but I was like, "Yeah, okay, we'll play." [Laughs.] We had a week to put things together. Dan knew Arlen from Victoria and asked him if he would drum, and we did two rehearsals before the show in what was then my loft apartment, just putting these six songs together. I didn't meet Arlen until that rehearsal, but it was really fun. And people liked the show, so we said, "Okay, we'll be a band," and we came up with the name Wolf Parade.
How did the name come about?
It's funny, because when we were trying to come up with a name, I called Dan, and I was like, I have the best name, it just occurred to me and popped into my head out of nowhere: the Unicorns. [Laughs.] And the Unicorns were just blowing up, but I had no idea. I didn't have my ear to the ground in any way. And they're both like, "I'm pretty sure there's a band called the Unicorns in our neighbourhood."
They live two doors down.
Yeah. I was so bummed out. I was like, "Fuck, it's such a good band name." So we ended up with Wolf Parade [and starting playing] more and more shows around town.
How did Isaac Brock and Sub Pop get involved?
Dan knew Isaac Brock from his Atlas Strategic days, because they went on tour together and Atlas Strategic opened for Modest Mouse. Isaac, at that time, was sort of loosely working for Sub Pop as a scout. So that's how that all came into play, and the Sub Pop people came to Montreal and watched us play a show. [They basically] signed us the next day, and the rest just sort of snowballed. Isaac wanted to produce the record, but he lived in Portland, and because he was a seasoned musician used to the industry at that point, he was like, "I want to record your record in Portland because that's where I live." And he probably figured we would just get on a plane and go to Portland, but we were so green, so we were like, "Okay, Portland, uh, sure." We drove everywhere in our shitty van and we were so disorganized back then; we were probably sitting around watching The Chronicles of Riddick or something. And we realized, like, "Oh, we got to go right now if we're gonna get to Portland on time." And then we just drove from Montreal to Portland, OR, straight. [Laughs.] I don't think we even stayed anywhere. We didn't have any money; we just took turns driving and sleeping.
The flip-over every couple of hours.
Yeah. And then we got to Portland, and Isaac, who wasn't super organized back then either, but his heart was in the right place, didn't know we were coming that day. This is before cell phones. A couple people had flip phones, but we definitely didn't have a cell phone. So we just showed up at this address that we had off Google Maps, and he was like, "Oh, hey guys, what are you doing here?" [Laughs.] And we're like, "We're here to record the record that you're supposed to produce!" But it all worked out. We hit the studio the next day, and the rest is history.
Was Sub Pop an easy choice for you guys? Were there any other labels circling the band at the time?
There were no other labels circling us that I remember. We were still really new. No one really knew who we were outside of Montreal, but because we had that Isaac Brock connection, and Isaac had the Sub Pop connection, that was the first label to court us. I definitely didn't know much, but I knew that Sub Pop was a reputable label. We were 25 years old! I'm the oldest in the band, and I think I was 26, and just so green. We didn't know anything about the actual music industry. We had just been on tour a couple times in our shitty, shitty vans.
The idea that Sub Pop wanted to sign us, it was a fairy tale. We're like, "Of course we'll go with you." And to their credit, we're still with them. They've been a great label for us. We've had the same A&R person the entire time. They have really low turnover there, and they're real sweet people. [Some of the] same people who were there when we signed are still working there, and that's just a really good sign to me. They put out all our records, so I'm happy it worked out that way.
One of your early EPs before Apologies was also produced by Brock and came out on Sub Pop, but before that, you also put out a couple of self-released EPs, which sounded a bit different, more abrasive and dissonant. How did you decide what would end up on Apologies?
Some of what was on Apologies did come from those earlier EPs, but just our favourite songs. I think we recorded 17 or 18 songs [for the album], so we had to cut them down. The EP that Isaac produced was the B-sides off of Apologies, the ones that just didn't make it on the record. And the way we decided that was — I remember Isaac orchestrated it — we were just sitting in a bar, writing song names on pieces of paper and putting them in a hat. Anonymous voting was the only way we could figure it out. We're such an egalitarian band, we always have been, so everyone has a say. We all put names in a hat of what we thought should be cut, and then whatever "won" those votes, that's what ended up on that EP.
But those [pre-Brock] EPs were self-recorded. Arlen was getting into recording and mics and that whole world, and we didn't know what we were doing, but it was fun to try. The reason they're so lo-fi and abrasive is because, a) that's the sound we liked. I never liked the sound of my voice clean. It drove me crazy. I wanted distortion on everything. But that worked out because, b) we didn't know what the fuck we were doing, so lo-fi was a really good option for us. And we just had toys for instruments, little Casio keyboards and broken Peavey amplifiers. Cheap guitars. Dan and I both played everything through Peaveys. And Peavey is great, don't knock Peavey. You can throw that thing off a house.
But that approach also gave the album, and those songs in particular, a certain type of sound, a certain feel that worked.
There was a mix of Apologies to the Queen Mary that we weren't present for. It got mixed later in a different studio in L.A., and we weren't in that session. And I'm sure it was great. I'm sure they were amazing mixes, but we were married to our lo-fi, abrasive, squeal-y sounds, and we couldn't get used to [the L.A. mix]. And it's definitely not the fault of the people that did the mix. They knew what they were doing, but we just couldn't get our heads around this clean version of our songs. So we took all the files and mixed it ourselves. And the truth is, Isaac said to us, "That sounds like shit." And we were like, "Sorry." We felt really bad. And he was right! Compared to the mixes that he had made, they did sound like shit, but we were just stubborn and young, so that's why the record sounds the way it does. I did a lot of weird processing to things on my computer.
It's all the better for it though!
Maybe. We'll never know, right? We'll never know.
Maybe in 10 years, you can do one of those, The Isaac Brock Mix versions.
Maybe. I think he was pissed off. He probably, like, burned them all.
Just deleted them all. When you look at the songs on Apologies, those songwriting credits between you and Dan are split 50/50. Was there ever any discussion about you singing each other's songs? Or was that always a defined point where you would sing yours, and he would sing his?
That's how it just evolved. In the beginning, the idea was only Dan sings, and then I started singing some songs. But I think — and this happens a lot with Wolf Parade — we have these lofty ideas, and ideally, we said, "Let's both sing everything. We'll do lots of backup vocals. We'll double each other's words a lot, and they'll just be very vocal-heavy songs. And there'll be two lead singers. We'll both do everything. Sometimes there'll be a song where I sing a little bit more, and vice-versa."
We always have these ideas that are good on paper, but then we get lazy and purposely forgetful, and it was easier just for me to take over the vocals on the lyrics that I wrote and Dan on the lyrics that he wrote. And we do sing backup on each other's stuff, almost on every song. If I'm singing a song, Dan will sing somewhere on it, and vice versa. But it wasn't the "both vocals at the same time, all the time" thing that we had once discussed, and it's probably the better for that. That probably would have been really obnoxious after a while. And maybe we instinctively knew that on some level.
In preparing for this interview, I read a bunch of older articles about the band and about the album, and they constantly bring up this "Lennon–McCartney" thing. What do you think about comparisons like that, being compared to other songwriting duos? Do you think it's limiting or reductive, or do you actually welcome and appreciate it?
I don't welcome it, no. It's just lazy, right? Lennon–McCartney, we don't sound anything like the Beatles. People are like, "Which one's Paul? Which one's John?" Like, neither. [Laughs.] Apples and oranges, y'know? No one is anyone. We're just a couple of guys making our songs. But it is nice to be in a band where there's two songwriters. It means that there's a lot of material to go through. When we're learning songs for these [anniversary] shows, we have a lot of stuff to pull from, and that's nice. But Beatles comparisons? Yeah, that's weird.
I mean, Dan doesn't even like… Dan hates the Beatles. I think they're okay. I don't know. I don't know the Beatles very well. I think there's probably some Beatles songs that I like. Dan calls them music for children. [Laughs.] I get that, but I like goofy music.
I don't want to single out any songs specifically, but the album has "I'll Believe in Anything" on it, and that's often considered your crowning achievement. I even played it at my wedding. How do you feel about writing a song like that, where it still has this incredible staying power that moves people, that gets them feeling something 20 years on.
I don't know — that's a good question. I'm two ways about it. On the one hand, I'm glad that people receive it. I think music is therapy, to make and to listen to, and that song has become therapeutic for a lot of people. It's cathartic for me to play, and probably cathartic for people to listen to. And so that makes me glad. I'm glad that I made something or had a hand in something that brings joy and/or comfort to people. The way we play it now is so different than the recording. Our three-piece version is our most stripped-down version of ourselves, but "I'll Believe in Anything" is still bombastic.
But it's so different to play. These songs that you wrote 20 years ago, it basically feels like a different person wrote them. I don't have a lot of emotional connection to that song anymore in the way that I once did. I have a different connection with it, and it is really cathartic to play, and I feel it when I do it, but that person who wrote those lyrics is gone. He's pretty far away. It doesn't always feel like they're my songs anymore, and personally, there's a small part of me that feels like it's not the best thing that I've ever done. I have other work that I've done that I prefer, but I know that, at the end of the day, that's probably the song that will be heard more than any other song that I've made.
And I'm not gonna say that that's all I'll be remembered for, but that's the one that will have reached the most ears, and that's fine. I'm grateful. I'm grateful for anything. I'm grateful for even one set of ears, for any song. But part of me is like, "Hey, you know, there's this other stuff..."
By the time this article comes out, you'll have already started the tour. You've got four shows happening in Montreal, and then you're coming to Toronto and Vancouver. What do you hope that people will get out of those shows, and what do you expect to get out of these shows yourself?
I hope that whatever synapses were firing the first time they heard those songs, whatever joy that the music immediately brought to them, whatever it was in the music that connected with them in the first place, I hope that that element is still there. Even though we're playing different versions of the songs, and it's 20 years later, I hope that the part of us that connected with them 20 years ago still exists in the music and the playing and our old voices. I hope that that feeling can recur for people and that they feel something positive from it, and not just get sad that the aughts are over. [Laughs.]
And for us, it's the same kind of thing. It's nice to revisit that world and to bring ourselves back to that time, to feel that initial emotional push and that initial catharsis that we used to get. And I still get it. Rehearsing is different now. So much of the songs are in our muscle memory, and sometimes in rehearsal, I think, "What are we doing? We wrote these songs so long ago!"
But then you get in front of people and there's nothing like a live rock show. That reciprocal energy that goes back and forth, from the audience to band, the band to audience. And the way it can build up and climax together — that all sounds very sexual. [Laughs.] But it does happen, and it feels really good! And once we get in front of them, I hope that we can create that energy for ourselves and for the audience in a way that represents the material well, that we reach a good place together through the music in a way that that can only happen in a live show. I hope they're good shows.