AT MOUNT ZOOMER

Sub Pop Records

“Strike up the band as the ship goes down,” Dan Boeckner sings in “The Grey Estates” on “At Mount Zoomer,” the second album by the Montreal band Wolf Parade. “Strike up the band, we have survived,” sings its other songwriter, Spencer Krug, in “Bang Your Drum.” There’s always something major at stake in the songs of Wolf Parade, which harnesses perky pop drive to existential reflections. The lyrics are the thoughts of a jittery urbanite pondering destruction, renewal, love, art and the meaning of home. The songs don’t hide their seriousness. But they don’t let it slow them down either.

Krug’s analog-sounding keyboards have the upper hand over Boeckner’s guitar in the arrangements, with pumping chords, insistent little hooks, synthesizer shimmers and progressive-rock arpeggios.

The music is rooted in 1970s rock and 1980s new wave, from Supertramp to Talking Heads, and it pushes toward choruses that sound anthemic but are filled with uncertainty: “Will you burn your bridges down/ singing la la la la la la la.”

Wolf Parade rarely allows itself pop’s simple release. The two men’s reedy voices come across as more harried than heroic. And often the keyboard bits are linked into structures that are neat yet crowded; just when one riff grows familiar and hummable, an eager new one shows up to displace it. It’s invigorating during a song, but a little exhausting over the length of an album. In Wolf Parade’s music it takes constant, frenetic construction to hold potential catastrophe at bay.

— Jon Pareles,

The New York Times