The House of Blues is the Chili’s of music venues. When I was a fifth grader in Tampa, kids would always come back from vacations in Orlando with souvenir t-shirts that led me to believe it was some mystical shack in a bog where the ghosts of Robert Johnson and Leadbelly plucked back and forth with each other through the swampy night, using the chirping bullfrogs as their rhythm section. Even when I finally saw the House of Blues, I was impressed at first. Sure it was in Downtown Disney, but it looked so damn authentic; a restored concert hall chock full of driftwood rafters, pseudo-religious artwork, and by God…a ramshackle water tower that had to have been from the gritty 1930s! As I got older, I quickly realized that every House of Blues in the nation looked the same. All of the seemingly slapdash, rustic decor was as meticulously planned out as the helmets of local high school football teams and the stuffed alligator wearing sunglasses that were mounted on the walls of any given Chili’s across America.

House of Blues Chicago is no different. Save for its globular exterior that tricks you into thinking your walking into the mother-ship in Alien, the artwork is the same, the curtain’s the same; hell, they even have the same guy in the bathroom that washes your hands for tips. Yet despite the epic scope of Wolf Parade’s intricate tunes, their performance felt as authentic and casual as if we were merely dropping in on one of their rehearsals.

After the pleasant, tribal sounds of guitar/homemade percussion opening act Listening Party, the curtain closed as the passionate, albeit mostly teenage crowd (how are adolescents so hip these days?  When I was in high school, it was all Warped Tour and Nu Metal concerts for us) waited for Wolf Parade to take the stage, eagerly salivating like…well, like wolves I guess.

The curtain creaked open in several sluggish yanks, as if we were witnessing the unveiling of a clumsy Christmas pageant being performed by preschoolers, an utterly appropriate introduction for the oh so humble stylings of the band.

They drifted on stage and banged out a few garbled warm up notes on their instruments until spindly guitarist/vocalist Dan Boeckner launched into the distinct opening chords of “Language City.” From the subtle half-snarl of his lip, it was clear that Wolf Parade was energetic without overdoing it.  Here is a band whose visceral brand of apocalyptic mini-suites would warrant plenty of histrionics should the need arise, but they treated their set as simply a good rock concert while still nailing every complex note of their haunting songs.

The brevity of their catalogue (2 studio albums, a handful of EPs) allowed them to stomp through the entirety of their latest output, At Mount Zoomer, and about half of Apologies to the Queen Mary. The set-list shifted back and forth between the hollow, steady momentum of Boeckner’s tunes (”The Grey Estates,” “Fine Young Cannibals,” “Shine a Light”) and the baroque, escalating chamber pieces of keyboardist/vocalist Spencer Krug (”Call it a Ritual,” “An Animal In Your Care, “I’ll Believe in Anything”). On their records, I’ve always had a hard time distinguishing the two voices, but in person, the differences were more apparent.  Boeckner possessed a throaty growl, giving his chugging compositions an almost punk rock aesthetic, while Krug’s pipes were more theatrical, armed with a vibrato that lent a sense of bourgeois to his beautifully bleak lyrics.

The other members of the band bolstered the Wolf Parade sound with thunder and poignancy. In the rhythm section, drummer Arlen Thompson sat tall and rigid, keeping his torso still while his arms smacked the drumheads with the sharp, staccato precision of a scuba diver attacking a Great White with a shark stick.  His tight, concentrated beats may be indie rock’s answer to ?uestlove of The Roots. On bass, Dante DeCare cranked up the fuzz, filling out the band’s spacey sound with muscular, fleshy grooves.

Keyboardist Hadji Bakara brought a creepy, yet playful nuance to the band, peppering each song with sci-fi keyboards, summoning a high pitched, ethereal squeal that was somewhere between the pinball effects of a penny arcade and the theme from Star Trek. His scatological playing contrasted well with Krug’s fuller, more traditional piano sound, particularly on the closer of their set, the ten minute plus, menacing opus, “Kissing the Beehive.” Bakara stood the entire time, dipping sporadically with each song while Krug preferred to sit, hunched over and bobbing his head, his youthful features making him look like Peter Pan at piano practice.

There was little crowd banter by the time the set ended. The band thanked the audience and left the stage, before quickly returning for an encore of two songs from Apologies, (”It’s a Curse,” “Fancy Claps”) as they had ran out of cuts from Mount Zoomer.  They left the stage for a second time, the house lights came up, and I was suddenly ejected out of the band’s rehearsal space, bitterly reminded that I was standing in a House of Blues.

Set List:
“Language City”
“The Grey Estates”
“Call it a Ritual”
“Soldier’s Grin”
“Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts”
“Bang Your Drum”
“Fine Young Cannibals”
“Grounds for Divorce”
“Shine a Light”
“An Animal In Your Care”
“I’ll Believe In Anything”
“This Heart’s On Fire”
“Kissing the Beehive”

Encore:
“It’s a Curse”
“Fancy Claps”

Categories: Concert Reviews, Features
Tags: Wolf Parade