transcript

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[01:26] 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 nineties. 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 gotta talk about how Billy's guitar solo on Soma kicks astounding quantities of ass.

Speaker 3:
[03:38] Yeah, get them.

Speaker 2:
[03:39] Seriously, a couple of 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 let the sadness come again, and then the guitar goes, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, 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 nineties. I care tremendously in the late nineties. 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.

Speaker 3:
[05:27] 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 nineties.

Speaker 2:
[05:39] 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.

Speaker 3:
[06:21] All I know is I saw the gravity shift. If you were at MTV or around MTV 1997, 1998, suddenly they decided Rock was out. Right. When Rock was still very, very high up in the thing and it was replaced by rap. Right.

Speaker 2:
[06:37] 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 BLEEP. 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.

Speaker 3:
[07:17] 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.

Speaker 2:
[07:27] 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 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 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.

Speaker 3:
[09:09] 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.

Speaker 2:
[09:27] In that episode, Billy also says he was summoned to an off-the-record White House meeting with the Bush administration, 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 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 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 Bizkits, your Linkin 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 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 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?

Speaker 3:
[12:19] Yeah, get them, Doug!

Speaker 2:
[12:22] Oh no. What if I personally pushed the button that wrecked Billy Corgan's whole shit? What if Primo 90s mainstream blockbuster buzz bin alternative rock plummeted in the popular imagination in the late nineties, 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!

Speaker 1:
[13:37] Yeah, oh, take it, Doug.

Speaker 2:
[13:39] 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 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 Brett going, wow, is quite a different musical and philosophical proposition than Billy Corgan on Soma going, boo-doo, boo-doo, boo-doo-doo-doo-doo, 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. Kick his ass, Doug, or maybe it's Brett. That song is called I Would Hurt a Fly, also off the tremendous 1997 Built to 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 Billy musically and temperamentally? Really. 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 Hayden for Uproxx in 2022. Doug talked about his thought process. In the mid to late nineties, 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-political order? That's the last song on the Perfect From Now On album. That one's called Untrustable. And Built to Spell are generally more of a Yeah, get them, 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 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 listen 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. 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 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 lovin, 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 to Spill appeared to be mocking specifically was the very notion that a rock band like Built to Spill would ever be goach 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 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.

Speaker 4:
[20:57] Look for the record with me on the cover!

Speaker 2:
[21:00] 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 nineties, 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 nineties, I developed an unbreakable spiritual air guitar bond with every aching, polished, bombastic individual note in Mike McCready's guitar solo on Pearl Jam's 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 1999 album, Keep It Like a Secret. You kind of just gotta go, wah wah wah wah wah, 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 via MTV, et cetera. 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 drolly 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 Melloncamp, 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 Melloncamp, or with droll resignation like Doug. Both valid perspectives. Am I an entirely philosophically different rock and roll enthusiast now? Is Bilt to Spill'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-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do 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-Gothie 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 kinda a lot like this. Yes? Here we have Built to Spill going do-do-ch, do-do-ch, do-do-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 god-wise, between do-do-do-do-do-do. And is Bilt to Spill's pointed absence of a music video. Bilt to Spill's pointed disinterest in music video fame of any kind. Bilt 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 Corgan rock music I care the most about in 1993, and the Doug March 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. This is a song that was written by Dan Bachner, who was born in Canada in 2003 and led by two drastically and triumphantly 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-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 rockstar 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 Wolf Parade. 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. 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 at break.

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Speaker 6:
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Speaker 2:
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Speaker 6:
[33:44] Get them!

Speaker 2:
[33:45] 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 angled 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 Bill Despill might gently clown upon later. You were right when you said, Huh, huh, who's excited to talk super in-depth about Arcade Fire? Not me, pal. That's who's not. Put them 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 them feeling, where I can feel my teeth gritting and my whole body tensing. But it's not quite the, yeah, 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, Parenthesis, Lies, Close Parenthesis, also from the Funeral Album. And there's an overwhelming downhill sprint, terrified exhilaration to the best Arcade Fire songs. And perhaps that's true of all hot young Montreal rock bands. Yes? 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, DEARS. 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 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, 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, et cetera. 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 slash college slash indie rock record label Sub Pop Records. Sub Pop, former home of Nirvana, Sub Pop, future home of Build to Spill. Wolf Parade consists of Dan Bachner on lead vocals and guitar, Spencer Krug on lead vocals and keyboards, Haji Bacara 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 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 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 Sub Pop. 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. All right, then. Offstage, in terms of Aspirations and Rockstar 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 Plummeling 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.

Speaker 3:
[43:47] Yeah, get them, Dan.

Speaker 2:
[43:50] 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 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 typographically 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. Again, this process extends to each individual song title. 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 auto-correct 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. 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, and I also appeared on the Sub Pop Wolf Parade EP, and now it is Track 1 on 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 in 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 List. 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 redownload 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. 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.

Speaker 6:
[49:24] Yeah!

Speaker 4:
[49:25] Oh!

Speaker 2:
[49:27] Something about the desolate, canyon-sized, lonesome, crowded, infinite echo of that solitary, bending guitar note.

Speaker 6:
[49:36] Boo!

Speaker 2:
[49:37] 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 Issaquah 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 Mouse 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's scream yelping directly into his electric guitar pickups like, yarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr I have not 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, 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 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 bass line 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, Krug and Bachner don't strike me as rivals or competitors or ride or dies with an ironclad artistic bond. They don't complete so much as compliment 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. 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.

Speaker 4:
[56:33] Boop boop beep boop beep boop beep.

Speaker 2:
[56:35] 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.

Speaker 5:
[56:54] Yeah, you. Come. Go.

Speaker 2:
[57:06] 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'd 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 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 and telegenic sort of rising panic is being played out in a hockey arena on my television. He just topped the boards. You don't have to guess.

Speaker 1:
[58:58] Yes, yes I do.

Speaker 2:
[59:00] 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 them panic attack song. So imagine my surprise. After this Heated Rivalry episode airs, and the song goes viral, and its streaming numbers go up nearly 3,000 percent or whatever, and then Spencer Krug writing on his Patreon, Spencer explains how the original demo for I'll 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 listen 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 ideolatries. 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.

Speaker 3:
[61:57] I love you so much. I love you too.

Speaker 2:
[62:02] 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 here. 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 here. 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 in 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 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 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 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 Elamin Abdelmahmoud, host of the fantastic CBC radio show and podcast, Comotion, and the author of the memoir, Son of Elsewhere. Elamin, it is so wonderful to talk to you again.

Speaker 4:
[65:34] Rob Harvilla, it's a delight to be with you. 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.

Speaker 2:
[65:45] I need a Canadian.

Speaker 4:
[65:48] Here to help, pal.

Speaker 2:
[65:49] 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 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?

Speaker 4:
[66:21] Rob, here's the thing about the good old days is no one taps their 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 grew up in Kingston, Ontario and I went to Queen's 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 this period of time, you know, Queen's University has had this history of really rambunctious and sanctioned street parties during homecoming every year. 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 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 got to give you an idea of what this period of time was like. And then a couple weeks later, Apologies of 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 we're like, we don't really want to look away. And then of course, you get to Apologies of the 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?

Speaker 2:
[68:07] 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. Well, Muddle, I'll just make stuff up. You've talked about the difference between a bunch of bands that happen to be from the same place and a legitimate scene. Wolf Parade came out of a Montreal scene. To your mind, what is the tipping point where you go from a bunch of rock bands that happen to be in one location to a scene, something that feels greater than the sum of its parts? How does that happen?

Speaker 4:
[68:42] I think a moment becomes a scene to me when there's a clear ethos that's being shared between the members of that scene. We should say 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 like, hey, this is how we do what we do around here. I think Wolf Parade is maybe a really good example of this because you get discovered, you get signed to Sub Pop, you get Isaac Brock of Modest Map. You're 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 Isaac Brock, they go, we don't like these mixes. And they do the mixes themselves. And they objectively sound worse. Objectively, they sound much 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 all of these people always playing on each other's bands and projects all the time, there's also an organic philosophy that kind of emerges somewhere in the middle there.

Speaker 2:
[70:15] Self-sabotage is the answer you just gave. That's what defines a scene. That's beautiful. That's very coherent to me. It is interesting about Wolf Parade, right? They made their record sound worse on purpose. That's not what they did, but that's kind of what they did. And Modest Mouse, I believe, flowed on 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 Wolf Parade, in various ways, they were really reticent to be associated with the hip Montreal scene. They're working with this big rock star now, but they don't want to sound too much like rock stars themselves. Do you get, in its totality from Wolf Parade, this reticence to be rock stars, to get too much attention?

Speaker 4:
[71:02] Yeah. I think 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 isn't this thing that says, how do we get a flow down? Like, how do we get a song that is gigantic, that is going to sort of get us on 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 there's a coziness to it, there's 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 Float On, you know? And that was also me, but there's something that I think is genuinely moving about saying, I think we know ourselves a little bit better than to try to do that other thing.

Speaker 2:
[72:00] Right. Okay, I have an impulse to jump in 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, breakout viral moment via I'll Believe in Anything on Heated Rivalry? Does that mean anything to them? Does that validate their perspective or the song? Or is it just a weird thing that happened that's kind of funny, but doesn't really affect their perceptions of themselves or how they view themselves in the world?

Speaker 4:
[72:52] I'm tempted to say that there must be something to your streams of that song jumping 3,000 percent. That must change the energy inside of your band or about how you feel about that song. But I think two things temper that for me. Number one is that it was the signature Wolf Parade song to begin with before this whole thing happened. Then on top of all that, Wolf Parade have just always been Wolf Parade. They're very interested in the thing that they do, and what you get in this, as transcendent a needle drop as that moment is. It's truly one of my favorite moments in television of the last 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 way. It's not trying to be seen in a different 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. I don't look at that scene and go, oh, I've learned something new about Wolf Parade. I go, oh, this person understands what Wolf Parade has always been.

Speaker 2:
[74:04] That's right. That's really beautiful. Because until this happened, I did not process I'll Believe in Anything as a love song at all. There's such an inherent anxiety to it, and it's always been my favorite of their songs. I've always loved it, but I never really processed it as a song that could soundtrack like a big romantic moment. Has it changed how you hear the song now that it's had this moment?

Speaker 4:
[74:32] Well, I mean, aside from the fact that it's now just blaring at a car windows much more frequently, and I go, what year exactly is it?

Speaker 2:
[74:42] Is it absolutely doing that, like up in Toronto? They're blasting Wolf Parade out of cars?

Speaker 5:
[74:46] That's awesome.

Speaker 4:
[74:48] 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 they're like, you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna put on this Wolf Parade record. We're like, yeah, that is, that's the correct response to this moment. But I will say that like, there's a synchronicity, right, between the way the song is like this like halting love song is kind of like, oh, I'm trying to muddle 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 and have now given you the second order of the thing.

Speaker 2:
[76:14] This is the answer, right.

Speaker 4:
[76:15] Yeah, whereas I think with that song, and with a lot of Wolf Parade songs on that record, you are, I think, getting the process of feeling as opposed to the end result of that feeling. I think that's what makes it such a perfect harmony between a scene and a song.

Speaker 2:
[76:33] I think the line that crystallizes that for me is nobody knows you and nobody gives a damn. That's the line that always kept me from hearing it as a love song, but in the universe of Heated Rivalry, when public perception and what people know about you and what people giving a damn about you is a bad thing. 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 to the outside world, people who do give a damn about them. That's why I agree with you completely that this is one of the best needle drops of the last five years. It's that line for me and just the way that it does make me think about the song so differently, which I don't get even from your average really awesome needle drop.

Speaker 4:
[77:19] Yeah. I think there is something about a perfect needle drop to me, communicates an emotion that was already in the song, but zeros on it in a way that maybe you hadn't seen it before. Then I always think about let me roll it, the needle drop in Licorice Pizza. I heard that song a million times before, but then you hear the tentative tenderness of the way that it plays in that scene, and you go, oh, this is what Paul McCartney was trying to say with this song, because it perfectly represented. 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 and reliving it. I've relived that scene so many different times. I don't know if you know this, Rob, but a re-watch of Heated Rivalry is called a reheat, and I have not done-

Speaker 2:
[78:25] Is that true? That's Canon? Okay.

Speaker 4:
[78:27] That's good. That's Canon.

Speaker 2:
[78:28] This is good information. Okay. Have you done a reheat?

Speaker 4:
[78:32] I have not done a reheat. However, I've reheated that particular scene one million times.

Speaker 2:
[78:38] I think you're not alone there. Yes. That YouTube has many millions of views at this point. A reheat. This is awesome. See, this is why I needed to talk to someone from Canon and nobody here knew that was me. 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. At the 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 you've heard a billion times used really effectively in movies and TV. Like The Sopranos, Dirty Work has long history of working in these contexts. Do you see any connection between breathing new life into a song that people have heard on TV and in movies a million times versus taking a song that I think a lot of viewers had never heard before and bringing it to the world, but also showing you a new thing about it if you know it?

Speaker 4:
[79:42] Well, I think the connection is the thing that you just said, that the idea that you are always trying to engage the pre-existing relationship that people have to the song and the pre-existing relationship that people have to that song choice before you make that particular choice. In the case of Dirty Work, I actually think you load in all that history as you watch that transitional moment, as you watch that transitional moment from the first act and then suddenly you're in that martial arts space and you're hearing Dirty Work and you go, I've heard this song in all of these different pivotal moments and also I'm now being given a new feeling. I've been, this movie is about to take us to entirely different space. Whereas, I'll Believe in Anything, I think 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've had friends who've seen Wolf Parade since this gigantic moment, like since the sort of blowing up of the Heated Rivalry thing. What is that like, yes? And, wow, they kind of talk about the fact like, yeah, there are a whole bunch of new people in the room who are Heated Rivalry fans, of course, but 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.

Speaker 2:
[81:07] 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 a solo piano version and he sort of talked about the genesis of the song. I just, that was a question I wanted to 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 it's such a beautiful thing if this phenomenon gets anybody into this band. So you're saying that is happening.

Speaker 4:
[81:50] 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 midsize 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 have to figure out how to reintroduce yourself. 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 want in on this thing. It seems kind of special to watch.

Speaker 2:
[82:30] Yeah. Are you a Spencer or a Dan guy in terms of Wolf Parade's larger catalog?

Speaker 4:
[82:38] Listen, I love I'll Believe in Anything, but I actually tend to be a Dan guy. When I think about my favorite Wolf Parade song, my favorite Wolf Parade song is a song that ends Apologies to Queen Mary, which is Hearts on Fire. I should note that it's worth noting Michael Barkley, one of the great great Canadian music journalists, Michael Barkley, when he was, he wrote this book, which is the longest book that anyone has ever read in the history of language. It is, it's 700 words.

Speaker 2:
[83:09] I'm listening.

Speaker 4:
[83:11] It's called Hearts on Fire, based on the Wolf Parade song. It's called Hearts on Fire, the years that changed Canadian music between the years, six years that changed Canadian music, between the year 2000 and 2005. And what he's really writing about is the ways of these music scenes kind of change how we think about Canadian music and the reach of Canadian music. But I don't, you know, I think he named it after Hearts on Fire because that's, this Hearts 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 joint.

Speaker 2:
[83:54] Totally.

Speaker 4:
[83:55] Of the band. And so 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.

Speaker 2:
[84:07] Right. And I love Spencer songs more in Wolf Parade, 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, Elamin? Are you sticking maybe to the hits for now?

Speaker 4:
[84:34] I think I'm sticking mostly to the hits, but I think like Dan songs and Dan side projects seem to happen to me, you know, like someone will say, hey, have you heard of this? You know, I go like, ah, it's got Dan. You know, 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 you got to give it a name, you know, and then you go, let's call it Handsome Furs, sure, you know? But that's always seems to be secondary to the fact that you're vibing with a bunch of people on the same kind of musical wavelength as them and you just have a name, you need a name for a project.

Speaker 2:
[85:27] 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?

Speaker 4:
[85:55] I'll tell you this, there's a wonderful 2005 review from John Pirellis of Broken Social Scene in the New York Times. In it, he 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...

Speaker 2:
[86:19] Not very, not very close, it's like three hours, I just, I'm going to show my ignorance here.

Speaker 4:
[86:23] It's five hours, five hours.

Speaker 2:
[86:24] Okay, excuse me.

Speaker 4:
[86:25] Crucially, crucially with Kingston, where I grew up right in the middle, which meant like bands were going from Toronto to Montreal, we'll go, let's stop it in Kingston and play. But, and very like unceremoniously, like a couple of days later, the New York Times was like, here's 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 rapper. It just doesn't make any, it just doesn't make any kind of sense. There is, 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 I think of this as a broken social scene and metric and vice. I think like there's something about also trying to professionalize and trying to make it.

Speaker 2:
[87:21] They're pop songs. Yeah. I love those fans, but it's different. I get you.

Speaker 4:
[87:25] Yeah. Fundamentally, I think they're trying to do a different thing. But I'll tell you this, in preparation for this conversation, I went back and looked at the Polaris Prize nominations from 2006. Polaris Prize is like kind of our Mercury Prize in a sense. Sure. You've got like music journalists and broadcasters and critics get together and go, this is the album is given to an album. This is the album that is the best one of the year. 2006 was the very first year that the Polaris Prize is given out. The class of 2006, man, it's like a murderer's row of Canadian music. I looked back at it and you got Wolf Parade on there for apologies for the Queen Mary, but also Broken Social Scenes on there, Metrics 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 pseudonym for Owen Pallet.

Speaker 2:
[88:19] Right. Is he an Arcade Fire guy?

Speaker 4:
[88:22] 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.

Speaker 2:
[88:35] 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.

Speaker 4:
[88:45] But there's, he poos clouds, and the winner is, he poos clouds.

Speaker 2:
[88:52] He poos clouds.

Speaker 4:
[88:54] I will say, I listened to the record again, I was like, oh, this is a great time. I was having a wonderful time.

Speaker 2:
[88:59] Does it sound like he's pooing clouds? What does it sound like?

Speaker 4:
[89:03] I'll tell you this, it's no apologies to the Queen Mary. Like it's not a...

Speaker 2:
[89:07] What can be though? Those guys aren't pooing clouds, I'll tell you that much.

Speaker 4:
[89:11] Not at all. But yeah, there's that in 2006, you get to 2007, the Polaris Prize is like Patrick Watson, also the Montreal scene, but also the Deers and the Miracle Fortress. So is Feist. And to the point of the thing I was saying earlier, but you're not entirely... You don't know when you're living through history. 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. I think I am more interested in music that gets at an idea a little bit sideways than I am in terms of music, but gets at 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, and by the way, there's stealthy Canadians all over American pop music, like right now. Dave Hamlin of The Stills, for example. That guy has six credits on Cowboy Fucking Carter.

Speaker 2:
[90:34] I did not know that. Holy shit.

Speaker 4:
[90:37] Six different songs that he produced or wrote on that record. Tobias Jesser Jr. There's a pipeline of Canadian indie musician to now make it. He's made the record with Dua Lipa. He made a record with Harry Styles. What I'm trying to say is Canadians are always coming for you and you can never rest. We're hiding in the wings, pal. We're coming.

Speaker 2:
[91:04] Yes. Stealth Canadians is a great side project band name. I'm going to start that one. Tell Dan about that. That's right. We're the Stealth Canadians. Heated Rivalry, Season 2, He Poos Clouds. You heard it here first. The Wolf Parade of Season 2 is Final Fantasy. This has been wonderful, Elamin. Thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 4:
[91:31] Rob Harvilla, it is truly my delight. This has been a wonder. Thank you.

Speaker 2:
[91:37] Thanks very much to our guest this week, Elamin Abdelmahmoud. Thanks to our producers, Olivia Crerie, Julianna Ress, Justin Sayles, and Chris Sutton. Additional production by Kevin Pooler. Animations and graphics by Chris Kaliton. Additional art by Matt James. A 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. And we'll see you next week.