Polaris Prize and Canadian Legacy

I sold my car in Carvana last night. Well that's cool. No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer, down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong. So w what's the problem? That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes to smoothie. I'm waiting for the catch. Maybe there's no catch. That's exactly what a catch would want me to think. Wow, you need to relax. I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this tablewood? I think it's laminate. Okay, yeah, that's good. That's close enough. Car selling without a catch. Sell your car today on Car vana. Pickup Fees May Apply. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty limited time flavors. New Whole Foods , Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch. As is their trending mango Yuzu Chantilly Cake. But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sale signs store-wide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market Did you know that the CIA conspired with MTV to make rock music way less popular starting in the late nineties . Billy Corgan said that recently on a podcast, another podcast, not this one, that's too bad. Billy Corgan, pugnacious polarizing guitar god front man for Smashing Pumpkins, a Chicago rock band that became wildly popular in the early 90s. Billy Corgan maybe kind of thinks the CI A 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 gotta talk about how Billy's guitar solo on Soma kicks astounding quantities of ass Yeah, gentlemen . 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 Man, I really hope none of the other parents on this playground are looking directly at me right now . I am being two hundred percent dead serious when I say that the moment right there where Billy Corgan sings, so will let the sad ness 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 and I cared tremendously in the early 90s. I cared 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 Okay, Billy, let her rip. I think, and I I will say it overtly, I w I think that um rock has been purposely diagnosed down in the culture. When would you say that began? Mid 2000s? Late nineties. All right. Here we got Billy Corgan on his own podcast 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 2026, 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. Okay. 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 gonna 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 b and if you had a few minutes to talk, I'd love to see that 's how you podcast, Billy Corgan. Obscu re, 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. Longtime Billy Corgan interview enjoyers like myself can tell you that very little is above Billy Corgan's pay grade historically, in Billy 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 A Door 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 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 could couldn't be less of an influence on the 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. Uh listen, I reserve the right to find this all very funny, but I'm gonna 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 become 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 is 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 rockin' in the free world at the MTV Video Music Awards no more. Neil Young and Pearl Jam have been replaced at the VM As 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 Girls 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 ? Yeah Get 'em dug! 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 Spill 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 Netzen 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 'em, 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 and arena rockin' sort of way. Doug or Brad going, wow quite a different musical and philosophical proposition than Billy Corgan on Soma going boo doom boodo . 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 transform ation in my personal taste. Namely, I used to be into alternative rock, but look out everybody, because now I'm into college ro ck . Oh kick his ass, Doug, or maybe it's Brett. 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 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 Bill y, musically and temperamentally? Really ? Uh okay, temperamentally they're quite different. Perfect from now on is Built 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 Haydn for Uprocks in 2022, Doug talked about his thought process. In the mid to late 90s, Doug says, quote , I signed to 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 polit ical order? God is wherever you're performing for and God is wherever you perform for. That's the last song on the Perfect From Now On album. That one's called Untrustable. And built to spill are generally more of a yeah, 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 the, and full title is Untrustable slash part two, parenthesis, 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 Corgan, 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 lovin' , a woman needs a man's love , and I'll hold on to you , my mid night star . Because if you get into Built 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 Espil appeared to be mocking specifically was the very notion that a rock band like Built De Spill would ever be gauge or corny enough to ever aspire to be famous and MTV 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 nineteen ninety-seven, 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 fifth nineteen ninety five look for the record with me on the cover 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, Soundgarden, 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 to spill song The Plan, opening track on the band's nineteen ninety nine album, Keep It Like a Secret, you kinda just gotta go woo woo woo woo and hope for the best. It's humiliating. Which might be the point. Humiliation implies an interest in the opinions of, in a desire for the approval of, the outside world, via MTV, etc. Whereas built to spill are pulling that very college rock feeling trick of deliberately turning inward, the bigger they accidentally get . Other pers ons are you tied with and vice versa. 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 drolly mock the cornball cliched lyrical sentiments of previous huge rock and roll radio hits . You were right when you said it's a hard rain that's gonna fall You were right when you said we're still running against the wind That song is called You Were Right, and the verses are all dead pan rock god quotes from, say, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Bob Seeger, and John Cougar Mellencamp, respectively. Turns out it drastically affects the tone, whether you sing the words life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone, semi-triumphantly, like John Cougar Mellencamp, or with droll resignation, like uh Doug . Both valid perspectives. Am I an entirely philosophically different rock and roll enthusiast now? Is Built DeSpill's brand of yeah, oh, get his ass, guitar rock, totally vehemently diametrically opposed to Smashing Pumpkins 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 , whilst Billy Corgan sings the line, You know I'm Not Dead, a bunch of times. Well, I'm convinced. Pretty righteous blunt forest 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 play ed the today or 1979 videos, I suppose. Damn CIA. But in any event, that sounds kinda a lot like this . Yes? Here we have built the spill going do ch doo doch doo dooch 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 god-wise, between doody, doody, doo doo and doo doo ch doo doo ch doo doo is built to spill'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 And I get even more confused in 2005 when I organically stumble upon my new favorite rock band. Sometimes we rock you home Sometimes I stay at home and it's just by start so violent, violent And here we have the band Wolf Parade. Formed in Montreal, Canada in 2003 and led by two drastically and triumphant ly dissimilar singer-songwriters who are bafflingly perfect together. This singer's name is Dan Bachner 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-rock star sentiment. But Dan sings those words with an escalating Springsteenian f erocity 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 gonna put rock back up very, very high in the fucking thing, all by his damn self . Our else they all will The sun 's on, well , the sun's all fell, the sun's on, well, the sun's all fell 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 a res urrect rock and roll all by his damn sel f . Give me your eyes, I need sunshine, give back your eyes, I make the sun to shine bath your voice Your voice your ghost 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 All 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 Wolf Parade. Spencer plays pianos and keyboards and whatnot. His voice is higher and jumpier and more volatile, and somehow even more fero cious. We both then very brave walk around with bold legs. When the scary day we both pull the tricks out of our seeds, but I will 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 episode is brought to you by the Home Depot. Spring is starting, so it's time to wake up your yard. And at the Home Depot, they've got everything you need to do with low prices guaranteed. Mowing your lawn is a dream with top -brand outdoor power tools like the Ryobi 40 volt mower with up to 50 minutes of runtime. You can add a pop of color with spring blooms and fresh plants and refresh your garden beds with earth grow mulch five bags for just ten dollars. Start your spring with low prices now through April 1st. Available at the Home Depot. Exclusion supply see Home Depot.com slash price Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections for what teens see and who can contact them plus time management tools and Instagram will continue adding built-in safety features to help create age-appropriate experiences . Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teensonline at Instagram.com slash teenaccounts Yeah one-eight hundred mattress Get 'em I'm just kidding I. have no idea what the ads are for. Uh 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, uh, I watched heated rivalry with my wife. And my wife had a lot of questions I could not answer about like pen is angled logistics, uh P-A-L 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. Uh 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 to 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 yeah get um feeling where I can feel my teeth gritting and my whole body tensing. But it's not quite the yer getum feeling that I get from Billy or Doug. This sort of guitar god rock and roll radically decenters the guitars in favor of pounding pianos, an orchestral chaos, and rampant unabashed earnestness. Maybe it's a Canadian thing . Every time it close your eye . Every time it close your eye . That song is called Rebellion, Parenthesis Lies, close parenthesis, also from the funeral album, and there's an overwhelming downhill sprint, terrified exhilaration to the best arcade fire s ongs. And perhaps that's true of all hot young Montreal rock bands. Yes? Oh with Cyber Be ast 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 Deers 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 repeat ing 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. Great earnest Canadian indie rock title. That's The Stills with Lola Stars and Stripes. We gotta run on hot young Montreal rock bands happening, parallel to a run on Hot Young Toronto rock bands, broken social scenes, stars, metric, feist, uh, plus hot hot heat in 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 so here we have Wolf Parade with a song called Shine a Light, track one on their 2005 EP, also called Wolf Parade, released on prestigious Seattle Alternative slashlege col slash indie rock record label sub pop records. Subpop former home of Nirvana, subpop future home of Built the Spill. Wolf Parade consists of Dan Bachner on lead vocals and guitar, Spencer Krug on lead vocals and keyboards, Haji Bakara 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 a 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 be,yond 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 hype might be, the mid-2000s Montreal rock scene is super hot, and thus super advantageous to Wolf Parade, which I guess explains why Sub Pop's press release for this EP reads as follows Quote: This is Wolf Parade's first release on Subpop. It's a four-song EP, the first two tracks of which ended up on the band's first album, 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. Alright then. Offsta ge, in terms of aspirations and rock star megalomania, these guys are way more reticent built-to-spill guys than pompous Billy Corkin 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 fixin' 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 ten thousand pounds there. It is the blaring organ riff there also. I do not historically associate organs and circus keyboards and whatnot with a 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 em Dan The only thing better than hearing Dan Bachner sing something is hearing Dan sing that same thing again later in the song, but much louder and more vigorously. Spencer does that too. All Al right.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 2000s, the aughts. Back when I listened to music primarily on iTunes, burning CDs and buying MP3s and downloading music blog stuff, etc., 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 typographic ally pristine , dude. So I get the Wolf Parade CD, I rip 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 . And I'll build a house inside of you. I'll go in through the mo at. I'll draw three figures on the heart . There's me on my iMac at two a. with autocorrect turned off typing you are my father ampersand i am my 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. Alright? I had way fewer es responsibiliti back in two thousand five, and so I had to invent some. You are a runner, Ampersand, I am my father's son, also appeared on the subpop 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 Krug'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 dishevelement 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 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 MP3 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 Rreunner, Ampersand, I Am My Father's Son, also has a legit air guitar moment that goes approximately like bo o . I am my father's son Yeah Oh something about the desolate, canyon sized, lonesome, crowded, infinite echo of that solitary bending guitar note. Boo something in there tells me that it's the right time to tell you that other than three songs Wolf Parade produced themselves, the rest of Apologies to the Queen Mary is produced by one Isaac Brock, the also pretty ferociously yelpy frontman for famed Isiquah Washington alternative/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 mouths are awfully important. In that they combine smashing pumpkins, guitar god, megalomania with built to spill Pacific Northwest unkempt ultra scruffiness. I've seen Modest Mouse live with Isaac scream yelping directly into his electric guitar pickups, like yo , 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 Dan song called Modern World. He's not in love with it. 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-stylized 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 winces 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 in the lady instruction 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 album at Mount Zoomer, 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 Bach ner don't strike me as rivals or competitors, or ride or dies 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 precis ely? Ghosts 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 202 4. 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, boop, boop, boop, boop, beep. 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 . Okay, here's the heated rivalry smooching hockey player scene. If you 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 I'll 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 a 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 200 0s, a mood I would summarize as, ah 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 intelligence sort of rising panic is being played out in a hockey arena on my tele vision. He just off the boards . Yes, yes, yes, I didn't. The other guy's 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, oh, get 'em 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 hand claps, and called it a s ong. End quote. Loose yet relentless hand claps. 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 was something like candy-coated ideolat ries. That is not a word . That doesn't even make sense. What do you want from 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. Sunshine 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 Hure . The quite distinct and memorable way Spencer sings, give me cu 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 prom inent H Spencer arbitrarily adds to the word he's. 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 two thousands rock and roll. That is the moments 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 . Nobody knows me no way . 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 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 Rubdown, 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 Indy Rock temperaments. Dan lives in Cleveland now, apparently. This is weird. It's awesome. Wolf Parade were already plenty high up in the thing, as rock and roll goes, before they kinda sorta accidentally had a hit, because the best Wolf parade song got awesomely shoved in people's faces. Because a man needs lovin', and a man needs a man to love . We are so honored to be joined once again by Elamine Abdelmakmoud, host of the fantastic CBC radio show and podcast Commotion, and the author of the memoir Son of Elsewhere. Elamine is, it so wonderful to talk to you again. Rob Harvilla, it's a it's a delight to be with you. I am I I 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, uh, 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, etcetera. 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? Uh Rob, here's the thing about the good old days: no one taps your shoul der and says, hey Pally, 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 gonna be worth maybe remembering. So yeah, yeah, I I I went to I I grew up in Kingston, Ontario and I and I went to Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. That's that's 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, Queen's University has had this history of really rambunctious and sanctioned street parties during homecoming every year. Okay. And so in 2005 they say we're gonna divert people um from from 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 a a parking lot concert and that is headlined by metric. So a parking lot concert headlined by Metric and Billy Talent. Those are the those are the the the the 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 that did just kind of give you the the an idea of what what what this period of time was like. And then a couple weeks later, uh 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 where like we don't really want to look away. Um and then of course you get to apologies Queen Mary. Um 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 Yeah. I had all these questions about smells, and now I can't ask them because we 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. I 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 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 an there's a clear ethos that's kind of being shared between the members of that scene. Which is saying like there's there's a philosophy that runs counter to the philosophies that are elsewhere. It's it's more of an in-group than it is an out-group thing. It's kind of like, hey, this is this is how we do what we do around here. And I think like Wolfbraid is maybe a really good example of this because , you know, you get you get discovered, you get um signed to subpo You get Isaac Brock of Modest Map. 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 after they record the record with 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 like much more they're 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. Um so I uh that's where that's where a scene sort of coalesces from. Like in in addition to like all of these people always playing on each other's bands and projects all the time. Right, right, right. There's also like an organic philosophy that's kind of like emerges somewhere in the middle there. Hmm. Self-s abotage is the answer you just gave. That what's that's what defines the scene. That's beautiful. That's very, very coherent to me. It is interesting about Wolf Parade, right? Like they 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 then 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 modest mass 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 it's 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 Floaton. You know? And and like I I that was also me, but but 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 th ing. Right. Okay, I I have an impulse to jump then straight to I'll believe in anything having this big viral moment 20 years later, right? If if everything about the way Wolf Parade came into the world was about I I love the idea of just we know what we want to do and we're speaking to the people we wanna 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 doesn't really affect their perceptions of themselves or how they view themselves in the world . I'm 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 Wolf Braid song to begin with, like before uh this whole thing happened. Um, and then on top of all that, you know, uh Wolfbraid have kind of just always been Wolfbraid. Like 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 truly like one of my favorite moments in television of the last like five years or so. Yeah. 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, you know, be transformed 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 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 out of car windows much more frequently. And I go like, what year exactly is it? Uh is it? Is it absolutely doing that? Like up in Toronto, they're blasting Wolf Parade out of car s? 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 a restaurant, so like, you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna put on this Wolf Parade right here. Like, yeah, that is that's the correct response to this moment. But I will say though, like there is 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 muddle my way through this big emotion and I'll get there eventually. And and the way that that scene sort of works, that it's 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's going to be, but I do know that I think we should try a thing together. And and and there is and and that song is the monument to that emotion. I mean like there is there's something so tender, I think about the the anxiety that you're talking about. It does sound an anxious, but I think it's like the anxiety of internally stepping up to expressing that feeling. And and and you just so rarely get that sonically represented in a song. Because usually a song is meant to be about like I've I've thought through a process and an emotion and 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, um you are I think getting the 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 is a love song. But like in the universe, if he ated rivalry, you know, when they when the when public perception and what people know about you and what you people giving a damn about you is like a bad thing, like in a very obvious way, that line hits very different ly in this moment when they're both declaring their love for each other, but also like to the outside world, you know, people who go 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 there is something about a per a perfect needle drop to me sort of communicates an emotion that was already in the song, but zeros in on it in a way that maybe you hadn't seen it before. And and then like that I I always think about uh like let me roll it, the needle drop um in uh in liquorice 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 like represented. And I do think like the thing that you just said about like the idea of actually this love can maybe contain you, despite the fact that out there you may feel like it can't. Um there's there's a marriage between those two ideas that is so I mean it's it's it's it's such a warm feeling that you can get kinda 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 a rewatch of Heated Rivalry is called it's called a reheat. And I have uh 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 that YouTube has many millions of views at this point. Yes. A reheat. This is so this is awesome. See, this is why I needed to talk to someone from Canada. Nobody here knew that was me. Um you mentioned licorice pizza. It made 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 in the cry for the first time. And that's a song. I w I love that needle drop in that scene, but I wouldn't say that makes me hear dirty work in a new way. 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. Yes. 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 pr 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 and 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. Um whereas um 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 mean I've I've had I've had friends who've seen um the Wolf Parade since this gigantic moment, like since the sort of blowing up of the heater What is that like? Yes. And and wow, they kind of talk about the fact that 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. Um, 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 I that was a question I wanted answered that I didn't know if anyone could answer. Like d 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 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 at certainly happening in the sense in the sense like those rooms are much more full now. Like the rooms are and I I 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 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 a kind of And now twenty years later you've got people saying, you know what? I kinda I wanna I w I want in. I want in on this thing. It seems kind of a good idea Yeah, yeah. Are you a Spencer or a Dan guy in terms of in terms of Wolf Parade's larger catalog? Listen, I love I'll Believe in Anything, but I actually like I I tend to be a Dan guy. Like I think when I when I think about uh when I think about my favorite Wolf Braid song my f my favorite Wolf Braid song is a song that ends Apologies to Queen Mary, which is Hearts on Fire. Um and and I should note that like it's worth noting, uh, Michael Barkley, the great uh great Canadian music journalist Michael Barkley, uh, when he was, he wrote this book, which is the longest book that anyone has ever read in the history of language. It is Okay. I'm listening. Yeah. It's called it's called Hearts on Fire, uh based on the Wolf Braid song. Um it's called Hearts on Fire uh the the the years of change Canadian music between the years six years of changed Canadian music between the year 2000 and 2005. And 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. Um but I don't, you know, I think he he named it after Hearts on Fire because that's uh this Hearts on Fire is a is a is one of those anthemic songs that I I think I go to Wolfbraid for. I love Wolf prayed for this sort of anthem ic quality, which I'll believe in anything notwithstanding. I think like Dan tends to write the more anthemic of the joint of the band. And so there there's there's a bit of a disconnect with 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 I love Spencer songs more in Wolf Parade, but I love Dan's bands since Wolf Par ade 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 the M Lamine or are you sticking maybe to the hits for now? I think I'm sticking mostly to the hits, but I I've 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 got Dan, you know, and and and 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 that 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? Like they're they're like, listen, I'm just making music with a bunch of people I like, but I guess you gotta give it a name. You know? And then you go, let's call it handsome furs, sure. You know? Uh but but but 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 a on the same kind of musical wavelength as them and and you just have a name. You need a name for a project. All right. I d just to w just to wrap up, having ha as you lived through the Canadian rock renaissance, and I'm so glad you're here to explain it to it. Like, is there 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 and what you loved about it personally, like where where do you go to get the purest distillation of the Canadian rock renaissance experience? I I'll tell you this. There's a there's a there's a wonderful uh 2005 review from John Perelli's of of 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 very not very close it's like three hours. I just I'm gonna show my ignorance. It's five hours. Five hours. Okay, excuse me. Crucially. 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. Um but and and and very like unceremoniously like a couple of days later the New York Times was like uh who's a Prussian uh broken social scene are in fact from from Toronto. But if you but to Canadians, I like I remember sort of like the reaction to that. It's kind of like if you called Snoop Dogg like a Harlem rap. It just doesn't make any it just doesn't make any kind of sense. You I rem 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 and I think of this of like broken social scene and metric and feist. I think like there is there's something about the also trying to professionalize and trying to make it that you know, like the pop songs. Yeah. I love those bands, but it's different. I get you. Yeah. Yeah. They're they're trying to do fundamentally, I think they're trying to do a different thing. Um but I'll tell you this, I w in preparation for this conversation, I went back and looked at the the Polaris Prize nominations from 2006. Um 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 kinda get together and go, this is the album, it's given to an album. This is the album that sort of is is the best one of the year. Two thousand was the very first year um that uh the the the the Polaris Prize is given out. And the classic 2006, man, it's like a murderer's row of Canadian music. Like there is so I look back at it, and you got Wolf Braid on there for apologies for the Queen Mary, uh, but also broken social scenes on there, Metrics on there, the new pornographers is on there. Well, none of those guys go to win it. No none of those people um won the players prize. It went to a project called Final Fantasy, which is a pseudonym for Owen Pallet. Right. Is he an arcade fire guy? He's he's since collaborated with a couple of the arcade fire guys. Um he had this project called uh Final Fantasy, and the the album is called He Pooh's Clouds 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. Um but there's he poo's clouds. Oh yes. And the winner is he poo's clouds. He poo's clouds. I will say I listened to the record again. I was like, oh this is this is a great time. Is it? Is it does it sound like he's pooing clouds? What is it? I mean I'll tell you this, it's no apologies to the Queen Mary. Like it's not a there's a What can be though? Those guys aren't pooling clouds, I'll tell you that much. Yeah. Not at all. Um but yeah, but there's that in two thousand six, you know, you get to two thousand seven, and the the the the Polaris prize is like Patrick Watson also the Montreal scene, but also the Deers and and the miracle fortress. So is feist. And to the point of the thing I was saying earlier about like you're not entirely you don't know when you're 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 I 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 that, 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. Um but there's something I think kind of exceptional about um that moment in in in Canadian music that we do keep reliving over and over again. I was, you know, and and by the way, there's stealthy Canadians all over like American pop music like right now, you know? Um Dave Hamlin of the Stills, for example. That guy has six credits on cowboy fucking Carter. I did not know that. Holy shit. It's it's six different songs that he produced or wrote um on that record. Uh you get like a Tobias Jesser Jr., you know, can there's there's like a pipeline of like Canadian indie musician to now make it, you know, he he's m he's made the record with Dua Lipa, he made a record with uh um with Harry Styles. What what I'm trying to say is Canadians are always coming for you and you can never rest. Um That's uh we're hiding in the wings, pal. We're coming. Yes. Stealth Canadians is a great side project band name now that you 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 is Final Fantasy He Poo's 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, Elamine Abdel Machmood. Thanks to our producers, Olivia Creary, Juli ana Ress, Justin Sales, and Chris Sutton, additional production by Kevin Pooler, animations and graphics by Chris Kallaton, additional art by Matt James. Uh special thanks to Cole Kushner 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.