60 Songs That Explain the '90s - Wolf Parade — “I’ll Believe in Anything”

Episode Date: April 22, 2026

Will you come to my cottage this summer and blast Canadian rock music? Rob is asking … for a friend! This week, we analyze the dramatic comeback of the Wolf Parade song “I’ll Believe in Anything” after its use in the hit gay hockey show ‘Heated Rivalry.’ He explains how his focus on the ferocity of Wolf Parade’s music distracted him from the meaning of the lyrics and how they surprised him years later during the song's resurgence. Later, he is joined by Canadian Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about the differences in the Montreal and Toronto rock scenes, remind Rob of forgotten Canadian bands, and explain what a “reheat” is. Listen to the songs from the episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3jGtG2AAHCdpazCzuSlHrP?si=c5055ad6583f45e6&pt=21d76d95c5a8429ca2ed00ab7a01c09a Host: Rob Harvilla Producers: Olivia Crerie, Julianna Ress, Chris Sutton, and Justin Sayles Additional Video Editing: Kevin Pooler Guest: Elamin Abdelmahmoud Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. Did you know that the CIA conspired with MTV to make rock music way less popular starting in the late 90s? Billy Corgan said that recently on a podcast, another podcast, not this one, that's too bad. Billy Corgan, pugnacious polarizing guitar god frontman for smashing pumpkins, a Chicago rock band that became wildly popular in the early 90s. Billy Corgan maybe kind of thinks the CIA secretly made rock music way less popular for vague

nefarious political reasons at the precise moments that the smashing pumpkins themselves became somewhat less commercially successful. And that is extremely funny to me. I reserve the right to find that funny. I will provide footage of Billy himself discussing this matter in just one second here. But I also need you to know that I love the smashing pumpkins dearly. And I always have and I always will. And in fact, recently, frequently, and unrelatedly, adverbs, recently, I've caught myself listening to just the guitar solo from the song Soma, from the wildly popular 1993 Smashing Pumpkins album,

Siamese Dream. And so, before we discuss Billy Corgan's profoundly amusing CIA-based rock and roll conspiracy theories any further, we also got to talk about how Billy's guitar song, solo on Soma kicks astounding quantities of ass. Seriously, a couple weeks ago, I picked up my daughter from preschool, and I watched her on the playground, right, joyfully rolling down a giant hill with a bunch of other five-year-olds, and I thought, I know what I should do right now.

And I put in my earbuds, and I blasted just the Soma guitar solo. I got out my phone, and I went, whoop, and I started at the guitar solo. and I could feel my teeth gritting and my whole body tensing while I thought, yeah, oh, get after it, Billy. Oh, yeah, kick his ass. And meanwhile, in another unrelated part of my brain, I'm thinking, man, I really hope none of the other parents on this playground are looking directly at me right now. I am being 200% dead serious when I say that the moment right there, where Billy Corgan sings,

So I'll let the sadness come again. And then the guitar goes is one of my absolute favorite moments in rock and roll history. I mean it. I probably mentioned that before and if I did, I apologize

but if I didn't mention that before, I also apologize. I care tremendously about rock music. I care tremendously in the early 90s. I cared tremendously in the late 90s. I care tremendously in the late 90s. I care

tremendously about rock music throughout the 2000s, and I care tremendously right now. And I don't give a hoot what the government has to say about it. Okay, Billy, let her rip. I think, and I will say it overtly, I think that rock has been purposely dialed down in the culture. When would you say that began in the 2000s? Late 90s. All right. Here we got Billy Corgan on his own podcast called The Magist.

called The Magnificent Others. Oh, I see. He's got his own podcast now. That's nice. Stay out of my lane, Billy Corgan. Beat it. Leave podcasting to the professionals. Also, open your eyes when you talk.

Why can't you look normal on camera like I do? Here we have Billy in late February 26, in conversation with Conrad Flynn, a fellow podcast guy and cultural commentator. I don't know Conrad's deal, and I bet it'll bum me out if I figure out his whole deal, so forget it. Keep going, Billy. All I know is I saw the gravity shift. If you were at MTV or around MTV, 1997, 98, suddenly they decided Rock was out, when Rock was still very, very high up in the thing.

And it was replaced by rap. Right. I'm going to stop you right there, Billy, lest we get mired in another. debate about the relative cultural merits of rock music, rap music, and pop music, etc. Although, if you're unaware, the argument that rap and pop music are just as important and worthy of cultural debate as rock music, well, that's a fascinating critical school of thought called and if you had a few minutes to talk, I'd love to see, that's how you podcast, Billy Corgan, obscure, baffling, years-long, self-indulgent inside jokes.

Watch and learn. Okay, Billy, get to the CIA part. So some people assert that the CIA was involved in all that, again, above my pay grade, but I saw it happen. I did witness it happen. Okay. Right. Above my pay grade is such a beautiful phrase in this context. Long time Billy Corgan interview enjoyers like myself can tell you that very little is above Billy Corgan's pay grade historically in Bill. Corgan's opinion. So this goes viral, right? Everybody gets their jokes off. And rightfully so. I first hear about this when a blue sky user with a display handle Cape Cod demon hunter says, quote, the CIA conspired to make me less cool than I was when I was 25 is the most succinct Gen X manifesto I've ever heard, end quote. And that's absolutely true. And yeah, okay, this whole theory is somewhat extremely ridiculous and self-serving.

You may recall that in 1998, Smashing Pumpkins put out an album called Adore that did not sell as many copies as Siamese Dream. And you may be aware that Billy Corgan has been mad online about it for 25 years. Billy Corgan was mad online about a door flopping long before being mad online was easily, even a thing. Billy Corgan and this guy I don't know anything about on purpose, Conrad Flynn.

They also talked about rock music's suspiciously waning stature back in December 2025 in their first meeting on Billy's podcast, The Magnificent Others. The CIA didn't come up in this first conversation, but some mythical, malevolent rock and roll hating man behind the curtain sure did. And here we are 25 years into the 21st century, and Rock couldn't be less of an influence on the social political order. Does anybody think that that's kind of strange? Right. That somebody decided to push a button somewhere and make sure that people like myself don't say certain things anymore. Right.

In that episode, Billy also says he was summoned to an off-the-record White House meeting with, quote, the Bush administration, end quote, which presumably means the George W. Bush administration, to discuss some kind of mysterious influence campaign, Billy presumably declined to participate in, but he still won't talk about it. Sure, listen, I reserve the right to find this all very funny, but I'm going to decimate what's left of my hearing, listening to the Soma guitar solo again at maximum volume while I laugh about it. I'll put it to you like this. If Billy Corgan-type guitar god rock music shaped your personal teenage identity, then it was truly jarring and upsetting and confounding to watch Billy Corgan type guitar god, oh yeah, rock music becomes steadily less prominent

as the 90s burned out and or faded away. It was suspicious. It truly did feel like somebody pushed a button somewhere. Late 90s, early 2000s, Grunge is toast, alternative rock as a term is meaningless, and teen pop and rap music dominate the landscape. Even your newer blockbuster selling pugnacious polarizing mainstream rock bands, your limp biscuits, your Lincoln Parks, all the young dudes have DJs and rappers now. Neil Young and Pearl Jam ain't playing rocking in the free world at the MTV Video Music Awards no more. Neil Young and Pearl Jam have been replaced at the VMAs by Britney Spears and a giant snake, respectively.

And look, yes, as cultural analysis, that's offensively overbroad, but that's podcasting for you. And can you blame my fellow podcaster, Billy Corgan, really, for suspecting that the CIA and MTV had a clandestine meeting in a parking garage where they decided to play the Spice Girl? way more often. The distinct late 90s sense that Rock has been nefariously suppressed in the mainstream and is consequently dead or dying, this is not a matter of facts or logic. It's a matter of feelings, specifically my feelings. Somebody pushed a button somewhere and wrecked Billy Corgan's whole shit. I'm convinced, and that's terrible. But you know what's even more terrible? What if it was me? Oh, no. What if I personally pushed the button that wrecked Billy Corgan's whole shit?

What if Primo 90s mainstream blockbuster BuzzBin alternative rock plummeted in the popular imagination in the late 90s, specifically because I lost interest in it? And I started listening to cooler, scruffier, indier, and explicitly MTV-averse rock bands like Built to Spills. instead. This song is called The Velvet Waltz off the tremendous 1997 built-to-spill album, perfect from now on. Built to Spill from Boise, Idaho, led by singer and certified guitar god Doug March. Coolest guy named Doug ever. I believe I bestowed that title, the title of coolest guy named Doug ever, on somebody else recently. But yeah, sorry, this Doug is probably the coolest Doug. Kick his ass, this Doug.

Yeah, oh, take it, Doug. Both Doug March and Brett Netson played lead guitar on the Perfect from Now On album, and that might be Brett going wow right there, but it's way funnier to me to yell, smoke them, Doug, so that's what I'm doing. You'll notice that the Velvet Waltz guitar solo kicks astounding quantities of ass in a less melodic and polished, an arena-rockin sort of way. Doug or Brad going, wow, is quite a different musical and philosophical proposition than Billy Corgan on Soma going, you know?

Yeah, 1997, I'm in college now. I'm a college radio DJ now. And to me, anyway, this feels like a cataclysmic, radical transformation in my personal taste. Namely, I used to be into alternative rock. But look out, everybody, because now I'm into college rock. Oh, kick his ass, Doug, or maybe it's Brent. That song's called I Would Hurt a Fly. Also off the Tremendous 1997 built the spill album perfect from now on.

And despite all the gnarly distortion and audible facial hair, that's got a semi-melodic classic guitar god sort of vibe. Fantastic. I felt like an entirely nautil. new person. In my mind, college rock and alternative rock were on separate planets, separate warring planets. I felt like I'd switched sides in a civil war. How different are the bands built to spill and smashing pumpkins? Guitar god wise, really? How different are Doug and Billy musically and temperamentally? Really? Okay, temperamentally, they're quite different. Perfect from now on is

Bill to Spill's first major label album, if that matters, it doesn't really, but it used to. Doug March, talking to the critic and author and friend of the show, Stephen Hayden for Up Rocks in 2022, Doug talked about his thought process in the mid to late 90s. Doug says, quote, I signed a Warner Brothers and I was a little wary. Nirvana happened and all those grunge things were happening and I wasn't into any of it. I didn't really enjoy any of that music. I also didn't like the idea of our stuff being played on the radio a bunch, and I didn't want us to have a hit. I was a little nervous that we might accidentally have a hit

and that our music would be shoved into people's faces. I really didn't feel comfortable or confident about that. Then he says, So I made the songs a little long and un-radio-friendly. I wanted to have a lot of people listen to it, but I wanted it to be really organically done, the way that I learned about music when I was a teenager, through your friend telling you it was cool,

not the radio playing it. End quote. Maybe that was the difference. In college, I primarily liked bands that hated the bands I used to like in high school. Anyway, does that sound to you like a guy hoping to use guitar-based rock music to deliberately influence the social,

order? And God. That's the last song on the Perfect From Now On album. That one's called Untrustable. And Bill to Spell are generally more of a year-get-em guitar band than a lyrical band. But the line and God is whoever you're performing for, that's a monster line, if you want the truth. That song is nearly nine minutes long.

And the full title is Untrustable slash Part 2, parentheses, about someone else. Close parenthesis, just to further discourage anybody from accidentally playing it on the radio. For me, starting college in the mid-90s, I'm watching Spice Girls videos on the dining hall TV, and I'm regaling my massive college radio audience. Literally nobody was listening. I'm spinning Sunny Day real estate and archers of loaf and whatnot. And it's not that I renounced grunge, alternative rock, MTV, or Billy Corrigan, But yeah, suddenly I listened to way less of all that.

And it sure did feel to me like I hit a button and became a totally different music lover who preferred an entirely different sort of guitar god rock and roll that openly mocked the very notion of guitar god rock and roll. A man needs loving, a woman needs a man's love, and I'll hold on to you. My Midnight Star Because if you get into Bill to Spill via their 1997 major label debut album,

perfect from now on, then probably next you go back to their previous record. 1994's There is nothing wrong with love, which has, you know, many scruffy and sweet and excellent songs. Shout out Twin Falls, Idaho. But the best part of this record is the hidden track at the end

where producer Phil Eck goes, Phil Eck here with a preview of the next built to spill album. And then there's a bunch of parody clips of dumb, hilarious, vapid radio rock songs. Doug sings so many lovely and really very sweet lines throughout this record. Seriously, but nothing sticks with me quite like

a man needs loving, a woman needs a man to love. And what this dumb little hilarious hidden track taught me or really it reminded me that yeah guitar god rock and roll is pretty dumb pretty pompous pretty ridiculous and self-serving you can love something dearly while also mocking the hell out of it and what built a spill appeared to be mocking specifically was the very notion that a rock band like built to spill would ever be goached or corny enough to ever aspire to be famous and m tv approved and very very high up in the thing as Billy Corgan put it. Whereas Billy just unapologetically aspired to all of it. Billy had naked, unabashed ambition.

Doug did not. And suddenly, in 1997, it seemed like ambition made you look pretty ugly. I think I read that somewhere. But yeah, as much as I still love Billy, I can totally imagine him sincerely going, Look for the record with me on the cover. That was a sneak preview

of the new built-to-spill album at your record store, August 5th, 1995. I hear that voice in my head once a month or so, and I always welcome it like an old friend. So this personal, musical, vibe shift of mine is the whole difference just ambition? Is the whole difference just ambition and irony? In 1993, I loved ultra-serious guitar gods, smashing pumpkins, pearl jam, sound garden, whoever.

And in the late 90s, I went full pavement, and steered toward shambolic, radio-averse, lumberjack-looking beardo goofballs who kicked ass but were like sheepish about it. In the early 90s, I developed an unbreakable spiritual air guitar bond with every aching, polished, bombastic individual note in Mike McCready's guitar solo on Pearl Jams Alive. But by 1999, this is way more my jam.

You ever try playing air guitar to this rad shit? It's rather challenging playing air guitar to the exuberantly noisy built-dispill song, The Plan, opening track on the band's 1999 album, Keep It Like a Secret. You kind of just got to go wha-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-and hope for the best. It's humiliating, which might be the point. Humiliation implies an interest in the opinions of and a desire for the approval of

the outside world by MTV, etc. Whereas Built to Spill are pulling that very college rock-feeling trick of deliberately turning inward, the bigger they accidentally get. This song is called Carry the Zero. And no, it's only a hit in the modest self-effacing college radio sense. But increasingly, self-effacing college radio hits are the only hits I acknowledge.

And bonus points if they droly mock the cornball cliched lyrical sentiments of previous huge rock and roll radio hits. That song is called You Were Right, and the verses are all deadpan rock god quotes from, say, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Bob Seeger, and John Cougar Mellon camp, respectively. Turns out it drastically affects the tone. Whether you sing the words, life goes on long after the thrill of living, has gone semi-triumphantly, like John Cougar Mellon camp, or with droll resignation, like Doug.

Both valid perspectives. Am I an entirely philosophically different rock and roll enthusiast now? Is Bill Dispill's brand of, yeah, oh, get his ass, guitar rock, totally vehemently diametrically opposed to Smashing Pumpkin's brand of, yeah, get his ass, guitar god, rock? Here we have Smashing Pumpkins on a song called The Everlasting Gaze, off the band's February 2000 album, Machina slash the Machines of God. No, I don't want to talk about that album title. I'd rather talk about this part where the roaring guitars go do-de-de-d-d-d-d-d-d-w whilst Billy Corgan sings the line, you know I'm not dead a bunch of times. Well, I am convinced

Pretty righteous blunt force air guitar material. In my opinion, also dig the slick, semi-creepy, extra-gothy office Halloween party video. That MTV seemed to play all the time, though less often than MTV played the today or 1979 videos, I suppose. Damn CIA. But in any event, that sounds kind of a lot like this. Yes? Here we have built the spill going do-d-d-d-d-d-ch, a bunch of times at the conclusion of the live version of Stop the Show, a song off the band's April 2000 live album simply called Live.

Also pretty righteous blunt force air guitar material, in my opinion. Quite frankly, the biggest difference here, guitar godwise, between do-de-d-d-de-d-de-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-... is Billed-d-d-pill's pointed absence of a music video. Built to Spill's pointed disinterest in music video fame of any kind. Built to spill don't especially aspire to hear their music on television. Doug, in fact, seems totally unfazed that rock is no longer very high up on the thing. Whatever the CIA prefers is totally cool with Doug.

Meanwhile, yeah, this whole time, I still care tremendously about rock music, and I always will. But as the 2000s unfold and rock and roll is nefariously suppressed and increasingly marginalized and decreasingly concerned with reaching mid-90s Billy Corgan levels

of mainstream adulation, I honestly can't tell if my taste in yeah, rock music is changing, or if what's changing is just my taste in marketing schemes and superficial packaging or the lack thereof. I'm struck by what I perceive anyway as the fundamental violent philosophical differences between the Billy Corrigan rock music I care the most about in 1993 and the Doug Marched rock music I care the most about in 1999. And I get even more confused in 2005 when I organically stumble upon my new favorite rock band. in 2003 and led by two drastically and triumphantly dissimilar singer-songwriters

who are bafflingly perfect together. This singer's name is Dan Bokner from Wolf Parade's 2005 debut album, Apologies to the Queen Mary. This song is called, you guessed it, this heart's on fire. And the magic trick here is that Dan just sang the lines, sometimes we rock and roll, Sometimes we stay at home and it's just fine. And as a series of words, that's a very Doug-type anti-rockstar sentiment.

But Dan sings those words with an escalating Springsteenian ferocity and desperation. And he transforms those lines into a profoundly Billy Corgan type, megalomaniacal, you know I'm not dead, super rock star type sentiment. Nobody has ever made staying at home sound cooler or more revolutionary. Late in this song, This Heart's on Fire, Dan sings many of those words again, and now it sounds like Dan's going to put rock back up very, very high in the fucking thing, all by his damn self. I confess that I cannot quite reconcile the text of the line I'd rather stay at home,

and feel alive, with the tremendous fervor with which Dan sings that line. But it's cool, because when Dan sings that, all I can think is, yeah, oh, get him, Dan, beat his ass, etc. But what's really awesome about Wolf Parade is that Dan ain't got to resurrect rock and roll all by his damn self. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 42nd episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s, Cole in the 2000s, and this week we are discussing I'll believe in anything. By Wolf Parade, from their 2005 debut album, Apologies to the Queen Mary.

Here we have Spencer Krug, the other singer and songwriter in Wolfgrade. Spencer plays pianos and keyboards and whatnot. His voice is higher and jumpier and more volatile and somehow even more ferocious. I've listened to this song many hundreds of times at truly incredible ear decimating volume, and I only recently realized that the first line Spencer sings there is,

we've both been very brave. This whole time I thought it was, we both bend, then we break. I've been too fixated this whole time on the ferocity of Spencer's voice, I guess. I've thought for years that somebody should use this song as the soundtrack to the shocking, colossal, crowd-pleasing, climactic scene,

in a movie or a TV show or something. And I suppose I guessed right that somebody would eventually do that, but I sure did not predict what the scene would entail exactly. That's rock and roll for you. Kick some ass, ad break. This spring, denim gets a softer, lighter update.

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Spotify advertising. You're among fans. Yeah, 1-800 mattress. Get them. I'm just kidding. I have no idea what the ads are for. The Wolf Parade song, I'll Believe in Anything, as you might be aware,

appeared recently as the soundtrack to a shocking, colossal, crowd-pleasing, climactic scene in the penultimate episode of Heated Rivalry, a gay romance hockey drama that premiered in late 2025 on HBO Max or The Crave Network, if you're in Canada. I watched Heated Rivalry with my wife, and my wife had a lot of questions I could not answer about like penis angle logistics, PAL for short, that spells pal, that's convenient. That's not how my wife put it, nor is that how I should have put it just now. Forget I said that. Free band name, though. Hey, on another topic entirely, 1993, I'm into alternative rock.

1999, I'm into college rock. But in 2004, hold on to your butts, because now, I'm into indie rock. Specifically, I'm into Canadian indie rock. Here we have the song Wake Up by the Montreal rock band Arcade Fire from their famously rapturously received 2004 debut album Funeral. And on First Contact somehow, that song felt like a massive, eternal, beloved, classic rock radio hit that built a spill might gently clown upon later. You were right when you said who's excited to talk super in-depth about Arcade Fire. Not me, pal. That's who's not. Put him on the maybe the world will end before I have to do this episode list right below Kanye West. It is enough for now to say that Arcade Fire's 2004 debut album Funeral

is an abruptly massive critical phenomenon. And as the 2000s rumble on, the arcade fire are going mainstream and playing arenas and winning Grammys and getting pretty high up on the thing. And I'm super into it. And Arcade Fire songs frequently give me that year get them feeling

where I can feel my teeth gritting and my whole body tensing. But it's not quite the year get them feeling that I get from Billy or Doug. This sort of guitar god rock and roll radically de-centers the guitars in favor of pounding pianos, an orchestral chaos, and rampant, unabashed earnestness. Maybe it's a Canadian thing. That song is called Rebellion, parentheses, lies, close parenthesis, also from the funeral album,

and there's an overwhelming downhill sprint, terrified exhilaration to the best arcade fire songs. Perhaps that's true of all hot young Montreal rock bands. Yes? Oh, it's a cyber! Here we have hot young Montreal rock band The Deers, with an exhilarating downhill sprint song called Lost in the Plot from the band's 2003 breakout album No Cities Left, D-E-A-R-S. The Deer's got plenty of roaring guitars and sound like you're sprinting downhill

with Morrissey riding on your shoulders. Which is more appealing than it sounds. Don't worry, you can't hear anything Morrissey is saying up there. Meanwhile, here we have yet another hot young Montreal rock band with roaring guitars called The Stills, with a song called Lola Stars and Stripes, which pulls the cool classic rock and roll trick of passionately repeating a lady's name until she becomes mythic. From their own breakout 2003 album, Logic Will Break Your Heart, great album title, great indie rock title,

a great earnest Canadian indie rock title. That's the stills with Lola Stars and Stripes. We got a run on hot young Montreal rock bands happening. Parallel to a run on hot young Toronto rock bands, broken social scenes, stars, metric, feist, plus hot, hot heat and the new pornographers from British Columbia, etc. Yeah, it is 2005 and Canada is hot. now. Montreal specifically is hot now. And certainly any hot new Montreal rock band will be absolutely

thrilled about this. And I keep my head up tight, I'll make my play at night. And I don't sleep, I don't sleep, I don't sleep till it's locks. Those thorns are buried alive. And so here we have Wolf Parade, with a song called Shine Alight. Track one on their 2005 EP, also called Wolf Parade, released on prestigious Seattle Alternative slash college slash indie rock record label Sub Pop Records. Subpop, former home of Nirvana, subpop future home of Bill to Spill. Wolf Parade consists of Dan Bockner on lead vocals and guitar, Spencer Krug on lead vocals

and keyboards and keyboards, Haji Baccarra on keyboards and electronics, and Arlen Thompson on drums, with Tim Kingsbury, he of the Arcade Fire, chipping in a bit on guitar and bass. Dan actually will join Arcade Fire way later, but I don't want to talk about those guys anymore. So in Wolf Parade, Dan and Spencer trade off on vocals more or less evenly. On Shine of Light we get Dan ferociously singing about making plans at night and not sleeping till it's light. Very classic rock radio type topics, these. Some folks float, Some are buried alive, also a quite familiar rock and roll sentiment. There is, of course, no remotely unifying Canadian rock sound or Montreal rock sound,

beyond a vague, bombastic, anthemic earnestness, purposefully undercut by an underdog-type scruffiness, as exemplified by Dan's singing about an awful sound in a haunted town that will not stay quiet. But as nonsensical and overbroad as the height might be, the mid-2000s Montreal rock scene is super hot, and thus super advantageous to Wolf Parade, which I guess explains why Sub-Pops press release for this EP reads as follows. Quote, this is Wolf Parade's first release on Sub-Pop.

It's a four-song EP, the first two tracks of which ended up on the band's first out Apologies to the Queen Mary. They are from Montreal. And because, according to everyone from the New York Times to Spin Magazine, Montreal is the next city to be made queasy and uncomfortable with media attention, this may factor into your decision to pay attention to Wolf Parade. That is a mistake, but it's one we can all live with."

End quote. All right then. then. Offstage, in terms of aspirations and rock star megalomania, these guys are way more reticent built to spill guys than pompous Billy Corgan guys. Not in the songs, though. In the chorus to shine a light, for example, Wolf Parade do not sound like a band made queasy and uncomfortable with media attention. Instead, they sound like a band, fixing to kick your ass up and down the street. It's the righteous pummeling drums there, man. It's Spencer Krug's high, yelping but crooning voice floating in the air like a feather that somehow weighs 10,000 pounds there.

It is the blaring organ riff there also. I do not historically associate organs and circus keyboards and whatnot with the guitar god rock and roll, but Wolf Parade will change that for me permanently. Shine a light is also a song where Wolf Parade immediately master the trick of repeating the first verse later in the song with added ferocious intensity. Yeah, get him, Dan. The only thing better than hearing Dan Bokner sing that same thing again later in the song, but much louder. and more vigorously. Spencer does that too. All right, Wolf Parade. Promising Queasy New Montreal Rock Band. Their first EP for sub-pop comes out in July 2005. Their first full album called Apologies to the Queen Mary comes out in September 2005. That song, Shine a Light, is on there. Here's a few

things you ought to know about me. Number one, in the iTunes era, roughly spanning the two thousands, the aughts, back when I listen to music primarily on iTunes, burning CDs and buying MP3s and downloading music blog stuff, et cetera. In this era, I amass a multiple terabyte MP3 collection where I retype every band name and album title and song title in all lowercase. My iTunes is typographically pristine, dude. So I get the Wolf Parade CDI. I. I ripped the MP3s, and I manually retype everything into lowercase. Capital W. Wolf, capital P, parade, don't work for me. Wolf Parade all lowercase.

This process is laborious, but necessary. It is absolutely unnecessary. It calms me down. It does not calm me down. And again, this process extends to each individual song title. And unfortunately, the first song on the first Wolf Parade album is called you are a runner and I am my father's son. There's me on my IMac at 2 a.m. with autocorrect turned off,

typing, you are my father, ampersand. I had a whole thing of whether and should be spelled out lowercase or if I should use an ampersand. I went all ampersand for a while, but then I decided I was disrespecting the artist's intent if they wanted and spelled out. It mattered to me. All right? I had way fewer responsibilities back in 2005,

and so I had to invent some. You are a runner, Ampersand, I am my father's son, also appeared on the sub-pop Wolf Parade EP, and now it is track one on a Wolf Parade's debut album, and it offers a jarringly splendid introduction to Spencer Krugge's voice. I've been looking at pictures of Spencer,

recently, including what I believe is a promo photo for his 2023 solo album, I Just Drew This Knife, in which he is wearing a bathrobe over a hoodie. Oh, wow, that is an exciting new frontier, an apex male comfort. And Spencer has this sort of sneaky, strategic, handsome dishevelment vibe that reminds me of Leonardo DiCaprio in one battle after another when Leo's in the robe and sunglasses, it's a movie reference. And if that image works for you as a bonus, now you can imagine Spencer singing all his songs,

like he is yelling them into the payphone at the asshole guy who won't tell him the password. And it is remarkable to me how quickly I get used to Spencer Krug's sprinting downhill wail of a voice. even when he's harmonizing with himself and singing even higher. It is remarkable to me how quickly Spencer Krug becomes one of my all-time favorite rock and roll singers precisely because of how unexpected and magnificently inimitable his voice sounds.

It is remarkable to me how quickly and definitively apologies to the Queen Mary became probably my single favorite album of the 2000s. Yeah. Another thing I cared too much about was my iTunes top 25 most played lists that I think everyone had the list that updated automatically as your play counts changed. I carefully tended my top 25 like a vegetable garden or a bonsai tree. If I heard a song on the radio or something, later I would manually add one play to my iTunes by scrolling quickly through the song on mute. If I had to delete an MP. for some reason and re-download it, I would manually rebuild that song's play count. I was keeping a careful record of my listening habits in the absence of anything better to do. And yeah, my top 10 was basically all Wolf Parade. I played the apologies to the Queen Mary album hundreds of times. This song, You Are a Runner, Ampersand, I Am My Father's Son, also has a legit air guitar moment that goes approximately like,

BOOOOE My father's so... Something about the desolate, canyon-sized, lonesome, crowded, infinite echo of that solitary bending guitar note. BOOD Something in there tells me that it's the right time to tell you

that other than three songs Wolf Parade produce themselves, the rest of apologies to the Queen Mary is produced by one Isaac Brock. The also pretty ferociously Yelpy frontman for famed Issaquah Washington Alternatives slash college slash indie rock band Modest Mouse. Fresh off the 2004 Modest Mouse semi-surprise hit Float-on. If I'm still even trying to find a historical through line in my taste in rock bands, I suppose Modest Mouse are awfully important in that they combine

Smashing Pumpkins Guitar God Megalomania with built-disbill Pacific Northwest, unkempt ultra-scruffiness. I've seen Modest Mouse live with Isaac's scream yelping directly into his electric guitar pickups, like y'r! And he made me feel like I was both 17 years old and 95 years old simultaneously.

Clearly, I cannot explain that feeling in words, but that's why God invented guitar solos. Anyway, here's a dance song called Modern World. He's not in love. with it. I'm not a must of torch. Drive the sandwiches back to the chase. And the severity of this production style,

the compression, the starkness, the brittleness, the dryness. Like if you lit a match while this record was playing, your house would burst into flames. That's another element of the apologies to the Queen Mary record where it feels like it'll take forever to get used to it, and then you're totally weirdly in love with it

within 10 seconds. The sense that the whole band is crammed into a tiny closet and you're listening through the wall. The brash hyper-styledized informality. My favorite part of the song Modern World is when someone sniffs super loudly. Oh, okay, so when I sniff like that, my wife, who is way across the room, she winses audibly and tells me to blow my nose. but when probably Dan does it, he sounds like a cool rock star. Fine. The other thing you need to know about me is that I joined a gym in the mid-2000s,

and I tried yoga like twice, and the lady instructor just laughed at me. So instead, I farted around on the elliptical machine three to four times a week for years, and my sole elliptical playlist for years was just Wolf Parade songs. When the band put out subsequent albums, I updated the playlist. California Dreamer, off the 2008 Out of the 2008 Out. album at Mount Zumer, Yulia, off the 2010 album, Expo 86, etc. Consequently, when I play Wolf Parade now, I gravitate toward the parts of songs that got me so fired up, I routinely almost fell off the elliptical machine. During that part of Spencer's grounds for divorce,

for example, when the baseline threatens to escape containment and throw the whole song into ludicrous speed, or this part of Dan's It's a Curse, where it feels like a thousand monkeys playing a thousand guitars and another a thousand monkeys playing a thousand keyboards simultaneously still all crammed in the closet. Yeah, I got no idea what Dan is even hollering about right there, other than their heart is dead but the body don't mind, maybe. And I'm not 100% on that either. I'm too busy driving the elliptical off a cliff.

It is the utterly chaotic but immaculately logical clatter of Wolf Parade that gets me. The jumble of voices. The violent lockstep interplay of bonging pianos and thrashing guitars. The violent lockstep interplay of Dan and Spencer's quite disparate voices and quite disparate vibes. The writer and critic and friend of the show Ian Cohen, writing in 2025 about the 20th anniversary of apologies to the Queen Mary. Ian writes, quote, Krug and Bockner don't strike me as rivals or competitors or ride or dyes with an ironclad artistic bond.

They don't complete so much as complement each other in the style of my favorite rap duos. There's the street guy and the space guy tackling the same subjects from slightly different angles, sometimes within the same song. End quote. What subjects precisely? Ghosts, a lot of ghosts, a whole lot of ghosts, curses, zombies, savages, the hangman, fathers, mothers, bad times, divorces, hearts on fire, etc.

Plus whatever the song, I'll believe in anything is about. I had no idea what it was about for the longest time, despite listening to it at ear decimating volume hundreds of times. I'll believe in anything was my favorite wolf parade song. Of course, back then I figured it was everybody's. And now, of course, it's really everybody's favorite Wolf Parade song after, you know, the smooching hockey player thing. Do you know the Netflix TV show, Nobody Wants This? The Screwball, non-hockey, heterosexual rom-com starring Kristen Bell and Adam Brody premiered in 2024. He's a rabbi and she's a podcaster? That's right. She's a podcaster.

Stay out of my lane, Kristen Bell. beat it. Okay, here's their first kiss. If you're not watching, it's fine. Just see if you can guess the exact moment when they kiss. You guessed it. They kiss right when the super bloopy, ostentatious synthesizer riff kicks in. I watched this show with my wife. My wife had no PAL related questions for me at that time, but I remember so vividly being so unreasonably annoyed by how pushy the music got when they first kissed. Boop boop, beep, boop, boop. Yo, I was quite irritated by how thoroughly the super pushy and bloopy music stepped on and

almost detracted from the kiss itself. I got salty, man. Let us now compare and contrast. Yeah, you. Come. Is it a fun? Okay. Here's the heated rival.

smooching hockey player scene. If he ain't watching, it's fine. One guy's on the ice, pulling the other guy, his secret boyfriend, out of the crowd and onto the ice, while the cheering, oblivious crowd looks on confused,

and two other secret smooching hockey players watch incredulously on TV separately. That's a lot of data, but it's all the information you require. What makes wolf parades all believe in anything? One of the best TV needle drops in recent memory.

is how perfectly this song mirrors the sheer anxiety of this dramatic moment. The mirrored, elated, escalating panic on behalf of everybody. Spencer Krug, yelling into the payphone like Leonardo DiCaprio, just repeats that line, If I could get the fire out from the wire,

I'd share a life and you, share life, over and over, with this weirdly hypnotic, upward spiraling sheer anxiety, that, you know, okay, mirrored my own circa 2005 anxiety, my elliptical-based anxiety, my iTunes capitalization methods-based anxiety, etc. Spencer brilliantly reflected my own baseline everyday mood

for much of the 2000s, a mood I would summarize as, I forget why now. Seriously, I remember feeling it, but not really why I felt it. It's for the best. But now a far more justifiable, intelligentic sort of rising panic is being played out in a hockey arena on my television.

He just off the boards. You don't have to do this? Yes, yes, I do. The other guys on the ice now. I never knew exactly what Spencer was singing there, exactly. I would have guessed I could take away the salt from your eyes, but I probably would not have ever gotten and take away what's been assaulting you.

I did not process I'll believe in anything back in the 2000s as a love song. I processed it as a, yeah, get them, panic attack song. And so imagine my surprise. After this heated rivalry episode airs, and the song goes viral, and its streaming numbers go up nearly 3,000% or whatever,

and then Spencer Krug, writing on his Patreon, Spencer explains, how the original demo for All Believe in Anything came to be. He says, quote, At the time I wasn't trying to make anything rock and roll or epic. I was just making another one of my kooky piano songs. For me, it was a scrappy little love song about two people willing to take a chance on their young relationship,

even though they'd already screwed up a little bit and its chances of survival were slim. If the singer could just settle down, face the reality of their love, then maybe they could settle down together. Maybe they could slash should even go somewhere new. Start fresh where nobody knows them. Love is worth trying for kind of thing. I recorded it with some shitty mics into my computer, added some loose yet relentless handclaps, and called it a song. End quote.

loose yet relentless handclaps. I love it. No dialogue now. Just two hockey players about to smooch while two other incredulous hockey players watch it on TV while Spencer sings the most panic-inducing part

of his scrappy little love song. I listened to Spencer sing those lines hundreds of times, dude, and I didn't know he was singing I could give you all the olive trees. I thought it with something like candy-coated ideolatries. That is not a word. That doesn't even make sense. What do you want for me, man? I was exercising. Okay, see if you can guess the exact moment when they

kiss. I'm just kidding. It's right here. And wow, there's a whole lot going on at this point, audio visually, but I do want to add that my single favorite word in this song is Heor. The quite distinct and memorable way Spencer sings, Give me your eyes. I need the sunshine. While he's doing the wolf parade thing, where he repeats the first verse later in the song

with added ferocious intensity. Awfully charming, the unapologetically prominent H. Spencer arbitrarily adds to the word heur. And that, of course, in my humble opinion, is the single greatest, yeah, oh, kick his ass or sure, kiss him instead, yeah, oh, moment in 2000s rock and roll. That is the moment when my elliptical machine shoots up into the ceiling.

That is the moment that hammers down the caps lock key in my brain. That is the moment, and I'll believe in anything, that does not so much quell my anxiety as make my anxiety seem triumphant. and heroic. Of course I feel quite silly now, having failed to process this as a love song, until that was very explicitly spelled out for me on television. This is the line that threw me off, I figure. See, there's your trouble. I interpreted the line, nobody gives a damn either way negatively, as if nobody giving a damn were a bad thing, as though I cared what other people thought, as though I were occupied with what other persons were occupied with and vice versa.

Whereas, for fairly obvious reasons, nobody gives a damn as the ideal state of affairs in the gay hockey show, and to a lesser but still notable extent, Wolf Parade themselves do not need all that many people to give a damn. Or at least they need to be a damn. Or at least they need, way fewer people to give a damn than Billy Corgan does. No, Wolf Parade are simply a semi-famous indie rock band that have rumbled on and also spun off into various defunct and ongoing, even less famous, but still quite rad, side project rock bands. Shout out Moonface, shout out sunset rub down, shout out handsome furs, shout out how great these guys are at naming bands. But Spencer and Dan and their buddies achieved a level of modest organic prominence

suited to their temperaments. Their Canadian temperaments. Their indie rock temperaments. Their Canadian indie rock temperaments. Dan lives in Cleveland now, apparently. It's weird. It's awesome. Wolf Parade were already plenty high up in the thing, as rock and roll goes, before they kind of sort of accidentally had a hit because the best wolf parade song got awesomely shoved in people's faces. Because a man needs loving and a man needs a man to love. We are so honored to be joined once again by Elamene Abdel Mahmood, host of the fantastic CBC radio show and podcast commotion

and the author of the memoir, Son of Elsewhere. Elamine, it is so wonderful to talk to you. again. Rob Parvilla, it's a delight to be with you. I am, I'm glad that you flashed the Canada sign in the sky, the maple leaf. And you said, let's get a Canadian in here. I need a Canadian. Here to help.

Here to help, pal. And I'm so grateful to you. I believe that you started college in 2005 at Kingston University, if I remember correctly, which is right when the Wolf Parade record came out. Apologies to the Queen Mary. And like the Canadian indie rock renaissance is in full swing, you know, between broken social scene, wolf parade, et cetera. Tell the people, please, what it was like to be in Canada as the Canadian rock renaissance was going on. Was it like being in Seattle in the 90s or was it better?

Rob here's a thing about the good old days is no one taps her shoulder and says, hey, pal, hey, buddy. The thing that you're living through right now, you're living through history. You're living through a thing. and you should remember the smells around you and you should remember the texture of the air as you're moving through this. Nobody says that. Nobody says,

hey, the thing you're living through is going to be worth maybe remembering. So, yeah, I went to, I grew up in Kingston, Ontario, and I went to Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. That was the name of the university. I started in 2005, and to just kind of give you an idea what it's like to start university

in the spirit of time, you know, Queens University has had this history of really rammed. unbunctious and sanctioned street parties during homecoming every year. Okay. And so in 2005, they say, we're going to divert people from wanting to go to this Aberdeen Street, very tiny street where there's just like a little bit too much chaos during homecoming.

And they organize a parking lot concert and that is headlined by metric. So a parking lot concert headlined by metric and Billy Talent. Those are the chosen headliners for this. I, like everybody else, went to metric, and then after that, people, after the metric set, people started spilling onto the streets. So I just kind of give you an idea of what this period of time was like. And then a couple weeks later, apologies to the Queen Mary comes out. You know, like there is, you're living through a period of time where you go, I don't know what it is about these Canadian bands, but they are capturing our attention in a really interesting way. in a way we're like we don't really want to look away.

And then, of course, you get to Apologies Queen Mary. And that's a record that like it just doesn't sound like anything else that I'd heard before that record came out, you know? Yeah. I had all these questions about smells. And now I can't ask them because you don't remember any of the smells. It's very upsetting. That's all right, though. We'll muddle.

I'll just make stuff up. You've talked about the difference between like a bunch of bands that happen to be from the same place and like a legitimate. scene. You know, Wolf parade came out of a Montreal scene. Like, to your mind, what is sort of the tipping point where you go from a bunch of rock bands that happen to be in one location to, like, a scene, something that feels greater than the sum of its parts? How does that happen? I think a moment kind of becomes a scene to me when there's like, there's a clear ethos that's kind of being shared between the members of that scene. Which is say, like, there's a philosophy that runs counter to the philosophies that are elsewhere. It's more of an in-group than it is an

out-group thing. It's kind of like, hey, this is how we do what we do around here. And I think, like, Wolf parade is maybe a really good example of this because, you know, you get discovered, you get signed to sub-pop, you get Isaac Brock of modest math, being like, can I make this record of yours? And you show up and you go, sure, Isaac, let's do that. And I think the most wolf-parade-ish part of the whole story is, you know, after they record the record with Isaac Prock, they go, we don't like these mixes, and they do the mixes themselves.

And they objectively sound worse. Like, objectively, they sound out with much more... They're more muddled. I'm like, what are you trying to say, Dan? What's going on in the song? But it's also... That's what a scene is. It's trying to say,

that other thing sounds too clean. The way that we do things around here is just like a little bit more playful, a little bit less interested in the modest mouseness of it all. And so that's where a scene sort of coalesces from. In addition to like all of these people always playing on each other's bands and projects all the time. There's also like an organic philosophy

that's kind of like emerges somewhere in the middle there. Self-sabotage is the answer you just gave. That's what defines a scene. That's beautiful. That's very very coherent to me. me. It is interesting about Wolf Parade, right? Like, they made their record sound worse on purpose. Like, that's not what they did, but that's kind of what they did, right? And Modest Mouse, I believe, flowed on was the year earlier. It was 2004. And this is a huge hit. Modest Mouse has sort of jumped

into more of a mainstream role. And it just, Wolf Parade in various ways, like, they were really reticent to be associated with the hip Montreal scene. You know, they're working with this big rock star now, but they don't want to sound too much like rock stars themselves. Like, do you get, in its totality from Wolf Parade, you know, this reticence, you know, to be rock stars, to get too much attention? Yeah, I think, like, the thing that I'm picking up on when I listen to apologies is actually, like, a comfort in speaking to the people you were already speaking to. Like, there is, there isn't this thing that says, how do we get a float on? Like, how do we get a song that is gigantic that is going to sort of get us on every, you know, every radio station that is playing? the Monash song.

And so just implicit in that rejection, even a rejection sounds like it's too harsh of a description of it because they're not saying that other thing sucks. I think they're saying the thing that we do is the thing that we like. I think like there's a coziness to it. There's like an intimacy to saying, we're trying to speak to the other people

who speak our language with all due respect to the people who want to listen to Floodon. You know? And like that was also me. But there's something that I think is like, genuinely moving about saying, I think we know ourselves a little bit better than to try to do that other thing. Right. Okay. I have an impulse to jump then straight to I'll believe in anything having this big viral moment 20 years later, right? If everything about the way Wolf Parade

came into the world was about, I love the idea of just, we know what we want to do and we're speaking to the people we want to speak to. We don't need a mainstream breakout. We don't need to go viral, whatever that meant in 2005, whatever it means now. What does it mean? Do you think it matters to them that they've now had this huge weird, you know, breakout viral moment via I'll believe in anything on heated rivalry? Like, does that mean anything to them? Like, does that validate their perspective or the song?

Or is it just like a weird thing that happened that's like kind of funny, but it doesn't really affect their perceptions of themselves or how they view themselves in the world? I'm tempted to say that like there must be something to your streams of that song jumping 3,000% that must change the energy inside of your band or about how you feel about that song. But I think like two things temper that for me. Number one is that it was kind of the signature Wolfbraith song to begin with like before this whole thing happened. And then on top of all that, you know, Wolfbraith have kind of just always been Wolfbraith. They're very sort of interested in the thing that they do.

And what you get in this, as transcendent a needle drop as that moment is, you know, and it's true like one of my favorite moments in television of the last like five years or so. There's everything that is organically happening with that needle drop is actually all owed to the song as it was. The song is not trying to be transformed in some kind of way. It's not trying to be seen in a different kind of way. I think the song does more for the scene than the scene does for the song. if that makes sense. I agree.

I totally agree. Right? Like there's no, I don't look at that scene and go, oh, I've learned, you know, something new about Wolfbraid. I go, oh, this person understands what Wolfbraid has always kind of been. That's right. That's really beautiful. Because I, until this happened, I did not process I'll believe in anything as a love song,

like at all. Like there's just, there's such an inherent anxiety to it. And it's always been my favorite of their songs. Like, I've always loved it. But I never really processed it, you know, as a song that could soundtrack like a big romantic moment. And I did you like, how did you, has it changed how you hear the song now that it's had this moment? Well, I mean, aside from the fact that it's like now just blaring at a car windows much more

frequently. And I go like, what year exactly is it? Is it? Is it absolutely doing that? Like up in Toronto, they're blasting Wolf parade out of cars? That's awesome. I hear I'm hearing the song everywhere and all the time

in the most wonderful ways I mean like go to restaurants and like you know what we're going to do we're going to put on this wolf trade record yeah that is that's the correct response yes to this moment but I will say that like there's there's a there's a

there's a synchronicity right between the way the song is like this like halting love song that is kind of like oh I'm trying to model my way through this big emotion and I'll get there eventually and the way that that scene sort of works that it's what that reveals to me is that Jacob Tierney, the creator of the show, like fully understands and has embodied, right? Like that feeling of like, you're just trying to stand in front of a person and go like,

I don't know what the future is going to be, but I do know that I think we should try a thing together. And there is, and that song is the monument to that emotion. I mean, like there is there's something so tender, I think, about the anxiety that you're talking about. It does sound anxious, but I think it's like the anxiety of internally stepping up to expressing that feeling. And you just so rarely get that sonically represented in a song. Because usually a song is meant to be about, like, I've thought through a process and an emotion that have now given you the second order of the thing. This is the answer. Right. Yeah. Whereas I think with that song, and with a lot of Wolfbright songs on that record, you are, I think, getting the process

of feeling, as opposed to the end result of that feeling. I think, like, that's what makes it such a perfect harmony between a scene and a song. I think the line that crystallizes that for me is nobody knows you and nobody gives a damn. Like, that's the line that always kept me from hearing it as a love song, but, like, in the universe of heated rivalry, you know, when they, when public perception and what people know about you and what people giving a damn about you is like a bad thing. Like in a very obvious way, that line hits very differently in this moment when they're both declaring their love for each other, but also like to the outside world, you know, people who do give a damn about them.

Like that's why I agree with you completely that this is one of the best needle drops of the last five years. And it's that line for me and just the way that it does make me think about the song so differently, you know, which I don't get even from. your average, like really awesome needle drop, you know? Yeah, I think there is something of a perfect needle drop to me sort of communicates an emotion that was already in the song, but zero's on it in a way that maybe you hadn't seen it before.

And then, like, I always think about, like, let me roll it, the needle drop in licorice pizza. I was like, I heard that song a million times before, but then you hear the sort of tentative tenderness of the way that it sort of plays in that scene. And you go, oh, this is what Paul McCartney was trying to say with this song, because it perfectly kind of represented. And I do think the thing that you just said about the idea of,

actually, this love can maybe contain you, despite the fact that out there you may feel like it can't, there's a marriage between those two ideas that is so, I mean, it's such a warm feeling that you can get kind of teary just thinking about the scene and the song. just and reliving it. I've relived that scene so many different times. I don't know if you know this, Rob, but a rewatch of heated rivalry.

He's called a reheat. Is that true? That's canon. Okay. That's good. This is good information. Okay. Have you done a reheat?

I have not done a reheat. However, I've reheated that particular scene one million times. I think you're not alone there. Yes. That YouTube has many millions of views at this time. A reheat. This is awesome. See, this is why I needed to talk to someone from Canada.

Nobody here knew that was weird. You mentioned licorice pizza. The two needle drops from the past few years that really got me are this one, of course, and then one battle after another, dirty work, right? At the sort of time jump when you see her for the first time. And that's a song, I love that needle drop in that scene, but I wouldn't say that makes me hear dirty work in a new one. This is a song like you've heard a billion times used really effectively in movies and TV.

Like the Sopranos, like Dirty Work has this long history, you know, of working in these contexts. And I, do you see any connection between like breathing new life into a song that people have heard, you know, on TV and in movies a million times versus taking a song that I think a lot of viewers had never heard before and like bringing it to the world, but also showing you a new thing about it if you know it? Well, I think the connection is the thing that you just said, that the idea that like, you are sort of always trying to gauge the pre-existing relationship that people have to the song and the sort of pre-existing relationship that people have to that song choice before you make that particular choice. And so in the case of dirty work, I actually think you load in all that history as you sort of watch that transitional moment, as you sort of watch that transitional moment from the first act. And then suddenly you're in that sort of martial arts space and you're hearing dirty work. And you go, I've heard this song at all of these different pivotal moments. And also, I'm now being given a new feeling. I've been, you know, like this movie's about to sort of take us to an entirely different space.

Whereas I'll believe in anything, I think, like, if you have a history with the song, I think you maybe hear it in a very specific way. And if you've never heard it before, you get to live in that feeling. Again, I'm like, I've had friends who've seen Wolf Parade since this gigantic moment, like since sort of blowing up of the heat of everything. What is that like? Yes. And wow, they kind of talk about the fact, yeah, there are a whole bunch of new people in the room who are heated wildly fans, of course.

But it doesn't, the song doesn't function differently in the set. It's still the apex of the night. It's still the sort of thing that you're building towards is just kind of like being discovered by a whole bunch of new people. Right. I was wondering that. I was wondering, yeah, it's just, I'm trying to figure out what. this means to them materially. Like, they've done a lot of interviews. They've gotten a lot of press. Like Spencer came out with like a solo piano version and he sort of talked about the genesis of the

song. I just, that was the question I wanted answer that I didn't know if anyone can answer. Like, what is the tangible effect of this? And the idea that people who only know this band from heated rivalry are now showing up for a wolf parade show. Like, that's a very beautiful thing. That's probably like a pretty intense learning curve for some of those people, you know, but I, it's such a beautiful thing if this phenomenon gets anybody into this band. So you're saying that is happening. I think it's certainly happening in the sense like those rooms are much more full now. Like the rooms are, and I think in general, if you're Wolf Parade and you were expecting to fill a mid-sized room, you can maybe graduate to a slightly larger room than that because

of the new interest in those people. But I don't think you actually have to fundamentally reinvent who you are for this new audience. I don't think you sort of have to figure out how to reintroduce yourself. And that must be a kind of relief of saying you've always been this thing at your core. And now 20 years later, you've got people saying, you know what? I kind of, I want to, I want in. I want in on this thing. It seems kind of came around. Yeah, yeah. Are you a Spencer or a Dan guy in terms of in terms of Wolf Frey's larger catalog? Listen, I love, I'll believe in anything, but I actually like, I tend to be a Dan guy. Like I think when I, When I think about my favorite Wolfbray song,

my favorite wolf break song is a song that ends apologies to Queen Mary, which is Hearts on Fire. And I should note that like it's worth noting Michael Barclay, the great Canadian music journalist Michael Barkley, when he was, he wrote this book, which is the longest book that anyone has ever read in the history of language. Okay.

It's 700 words. I'm listening. Yeah. It's called, it's called Hearts on Fire. based on the Wolfbrate song. It's called House on Fire, the years that changed Canadian music between the years,

six years of change Canadian music, between the year 2000 and 2005. And what he's really writing about is the ways that these music scenes kind of changed how we think about Canadian music and the reach of Canadian music. But I don't, you know, I think he named it after Harz on Fire

because that's a, this House on Fire is one of those anthemic songs that I think I go to Wolf. parade for. I love Wolf parade for this sort of anthemic quality, which I'll believe in anything notwithstanding, I think, like, Dan tends to write the more anthemic of the joints. Totally. Totally. Totally. And so there's a bit of a disconnect of being like, their biggest anthem was a Spencer song, but also Dan seems to have the more natural inclination, I think, towards the anthemic. Right. And I love Spencer songs more in Wolfbrade, but I love Dan's bands since Wolf

parade better. Like, I'm a handsome furs guy. Like, it's, this is a band with a large, you know, extended universe around them, you know, Spencer and Dan both have a ton of offshoot bands. Like, there's all these rabbit holes inside projects. Like, this is a very challenging band to, like, keep up

with, you know, are you keeping up with them, Elamene? Are you sticking maybe to the hits for now? I think I'm sticking mostly to the hits, but I think, like, Dan's songs and Dan side projects seem to happen to me. You know, like someone will say, hey, have you heard of this, you know, and I'll go like, ah, it's God-DAN, you know, and there is, and actually

there's something really lovely about that, because when you are oriented towards bands that have side projects, you almost get the sense of like Dan and Spencer, and a lot of these musicians who tend towards a side project are like a little frustrated that you have to have a name in the first place, you know? They're like, listen, I'm just making music with a bunch of people I like, but I guess we've got to give it a name, you know, and then you go, let's call it Han, some furs, sure, you know. But that's always seems to be secondary to the fact that you're, you're vibing with a bunch of people, you know, on the same kind of musical wavelength as them.

And you just have a name, you need a name for a project. All right. Just to wrap up, having, as you lived through the Canadian rock Renaissance, and I'm so glad you're here to explain it to it. Like, is this the band, is this the song that you remember most? Like, is there a crystallized moment, if it's a band or a song or an album. Like, when you think about this era and what you loved about it personally, like, where do you go to get the purest distillation of the Canadian rock Renaissance experience? I'll tell you this. There's a wonderful 2005 review from John Pirelli's of broken social scene in the New York Times. And in it, he sort of talks about broken social scene and the ways that they have benefited from,

but also are accelerating the momentum of the Montreal scene. And broken social scene are not from fucking Montreal. And so that, that, that, and. Not very, not very close. It's like three hours. I just, I'm going to show my ignorance here. It's five hours. Five hours.

Okay. Excuse me. Crucially, with Kingston where I grew up right in the middle, which meant like bands were going from Toronto to Montreal. There you go. Let's stop it in Kingston and play. But, and, and, and, and, very unceremoniously, like, a couple of days later, the New York Times was like,

uh, it was a correction. Broken social scene are, in fact, from Toronto. But if you, but to Canadians, I remember sort of like the reaction to that. It's kind of like if you called Snoop Dogg, like a Harlem rat.

Right. It just doesn't make any, it just doesn't make any kind of sense. There is, I remember, what I remember is like living through these kind of like two distinct scenes that have very different vibes, but also a lot of momentum.

Right? Like the Montreal scene was much more experimental. The Toronto scene was a bit more, I think, like, formal in a sense. Like, and I think of this of like broken social scene and metric and Fice. I think like there is, there's something about also trying to professionalize and trying to make it that, you know, like they're pop songs. Yeah. I love those bands. But it's different. I get you. Yeah. Yeah. They're trying to do fundamentally, I think they're trying to do a different thing. But I'll tell you this. I mean, in preparation for this conversation, I went back and looked at the Polaris Prize nominating. nominations from 2006. And Polaris Prize is like kind of our Mercury Prize in a sense. Sure. You know, you've got like music journalists and broadcasters and critics kind of get together and go, this is the album, it's given to an album. This is the album that sort of is the best one of the year. 2006 was the very first year that the Polaris Prize is given out.

And the class of 2006, man, it's like a murderer's row of Canadian music. So I look back at it and you got Wolfbrain on there for apologies for the Queen Mary, but also broken social scenes on there. is on there. The new pornographers is on there. None of those guys go to win it. None of those people won the Polaris Prize. It went to a project called Final Fantasy, which is a student for Owen Palette. Right. Is he an arcade fire guy? He's since collaborated with a couple of arcade fire guys. He had this project called Final Fantasy, and the album is called He Poos Clouds, because of course it was.

Because of course it was. Thank you for reminding me that that exists. I had erased that name from my brain, and I was wrong to do that. And I'm so grateful that you reminded me. But there's, he poos clouds. Oh, yes. And the winner is he poos clouds.

He poos clouds. I will say, I'll listen to the record again. I was like, oh, this is a great time. I was having a wonderful time. Is it? Is it, does it sound like he's pooing clouds? I mean, I'll tell you this, it's no apologies to the Queen Mary. Like, it's not a...

What can be, though? Those guys aren't pooling clouds. I'll tell you that much, yeah. Not at all. But yeah, there's that in 2006, you know, you get to 2007. And the Polaris Prize is like Patrick Watson, also the Montreal scene, but also the Dears and the Miracle Fortress. So is Feist.

And to the point of the thing I was saying earlier, but like, you're not entirely, you don't know when you're living. living through history. Like, no one says, geez, you should really remember this moment because all of these artists are doing something that is going to be remembered in a certain kind of way. But they all transformed my own music taste in a certain kind of way. Like, I think, like, I am more interested in music that gets at an idea a little bit sideways than I am, you know, in terms of music that gets this stuff quite head-on, partly because

I was shaped by artists who are making music in this time. period. I'm not the first person to go to university and go, whoa, there's more music than I heard on the radio. But there's something, I think, kind of exceptional about that moment in Canadian music that we do keep reliving over and over again. I was, you know, and by the way, there's stealthy Canadians all over like American pop music like right now, you know? Dave Hamlin of the Stills, for example, that guy has six credits. on cowboy fucking Carter. I did not know that.

Holy shit. Six different songs that he produced or wrote on that record. You get, Tobias Jester Jr., you know, there's like a pipeline of like Canadian indie musician to now make it, you know, he's made the record with Dua Lippa. He made a record with Harry Stiles.

What I'm trying to say is Canadians are always coming for you and you can never rest. that's uh we're hiding in the wings pal we're coming yes stealth canadians is a great side project band name i wouldn't mention it i'm gonna start that one and have no canadian element that's right we're the stealth canadians uh heated rivalry season two he pooh's clouds you heard it here first the wolf parade of season two is is final fantasy is he poohs cloud this has been wonderful elamine Thank you so much for being here. Rob Harvilla, it is truly my delight.

This has been a wonder. Thank you, friend. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Elamene Abdel-Makmood. Thanks to our producers, Olivia Creary, Juliana Ress, Justin Sales, and Chris Sutton, additional production by Kevin Pooler, animations and graphics by Chris Calliton, additional art by Matt James. Special thanks to Cole Kushna, and thanks to you for listening. And now let's all go listen to I'll Believe in Anything by Wolf Parade.

We'll see you next week.