Wolf Parade Cancel Tour Due to Coronavirus Pandemic

In addition to punk-pop band Green Day, K-pop superstars BTS, and pop princess Avril Lavigne, the Canadian indie rock band Wolf Parade have cancelled their planned tour due to concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.  

Wolf Parade

Wolf Parade at Shaky Knees, 2017

Wolf Parade is a Canadian rock band fronted by Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner. According to Pitchfork, their 2005 debut album, Apologies to the Queen Mary, "was one of the great statement albums of indie rock’s blockbuster era, paving the way for years of similarly jittery, nervy bands."  

After Queen Mary, the band released two more full-length albums before taking a five-year hiatus in 2011. They announced their return in 2016, releasing a self-titled EP in May of that year and a fourth album, Cry Cry Cry, in October 2017.  

Wolf Parade's new album, Thin Mind, came out January 24th. As described by Pitchfork, the opening track, Under Glass, "opens the record with the charging gusto of Elvis Costello’s new wave stompers." 

True

Operators is the new band from Dan Boeckner (Wolf Parade, Handsome Furs, Divine Fits).  I saw the webcast of their set at Pickathon yesterday, and Operators might very well be his best effort yet.

Here's their debut single, True.

Moonface

Canadian musician Moonface, aka Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade and other bands, has released the video for the song Headed For The Door from his excellent album with the Finnish band Siinai, Heartbreaking Bravery.  

Unfortuantely, the rights to the video are owned by Warner Music Group, which is blocking the video from being embedded on sites such as this.  You can see the video, though, over here at YouTube, but in the meantime, here's a Soundcloud clip of the song.



I've seen Moonface perform with Sinaii at The Earl back last June, where he picked up a book and started reading aloud when he got to the letter portion of Headed For The Door.

I saw Moonface perform again last September at Portland's Doug Fir Lounge during MusicFest Northwest. Overall, I thought the Earl set was better, principally because he and Siinai played a few mind-bending, extended instrumentals during that earlier show.  As he set up at MFNW, Krug announced that the Doug Fir was concerned about time so they were going to have to “muscle through” their set.  Perhaps that's the reason they didn't perform the extended instrumentals, but coincidentally, just before the announcement was made, I had somehow gotten into a conversation with some bookish guy who was fervently scribbling in a notebook near the front of the stage.  We were discussing Zen Master Dogen's 13th Century essay titled Uji ("Existence/Time"), in which Dogen claims that all time is flexible and relative, and that time is a product of our own minds, not some fixed absolute through which we move.  Don't ask me how this got started because I don't remember, but it's the kind of thing that seems to only happen to me. Anyway, when Krug made the announcement, I couldn't resist telling him, since I was right up at the edge of the stage and it was the whole point of the conversation I was in, "You are not in time, time is in you."

"Whatever," Krug told me, and launched the band into Teary Eyes and Bloody Lips.

I didn't stay for the entire set and don't know if Krug again read from the book, as a friend I had met that week wanted to walk over to Holocene a couple of blocks away to catch the rest of the set by the band Trust.  You can say we headed for the door before Headed For The Door.  However, I never got to post any but one of the pictures from Moonface's Doug Fir set, though, so here they are:

One other thing - at both Moonface sets, both at The Earl and at Doug Fir, his audience included a large number of bros.  Among other definitions at urbandictionary.com, "bros" are:

"Obnoxious partying males who are often seen at college parties. When they aren’t making an ass of themselves they usually just stand around holding a red plastic cup waiting for something exciting to happen so they can scream something that demonstrates how much they enjoy partying. Nearly everyone in a fraternity is a bro but there are also many bros who are not in a fraternity. They often wear a rugby shirt and a baseball cap. It is not uncommon for them to have spiked hair with frosted tips. 

Bros actually chose this name for themselves as they often refer to each other as "bro" even though they are not related. 

I couldn't go to sleep last night because some bros at the party next door kept screaming, "Whoooooo!!! YEAAHHHHH! Whooooooo!" 

It might be something about the epic quality of Moonface songs or Siinai's surging, anthemic sweep of sound,   but I saw more bros at the Moonface show at The Earl than I've ever seen at The Earl before or since, and I saw more bros at Moonface's Doug Fir show than at any other MFNW event in the two years I've been going.  This is not a negative reflection on Moonface in any way, but the question that I can't answer is how did both Southeastern and Northwestern bros ever get to hear of Moonface in the first place?