I decided to end the bio I wrote on Wolf Parade by comparing At Mount Zoomer to Television’s landmark debut album Marquee Moon. Some people are already suggesting that this qualitative pairing is a little outrageous. This is fine; It may actually be true. I wanted the association to be provocative. I think At Mount Zoomer is a compelling and unique record, and I want to drag in to the debate even the greatest skeptics, the fauxhawks and the new mullets, the pegleg pants and the neck beards. Everyone who proves me wrong is just one more person who’s heard the record (Thanks, SubPop, but seriously, you keep the street team swag – I do this out of the goodness of my heart).
But I do, additionally, actually think there are some objective touchpoints that both records share:
- Both records are, to some degree, technical exercises. There are a handful of traditionally structured, pop-esque tracks on each, yes, but for the most part these records focus on expanding the range of possibilities in short-form song arrangement.
- Both records have at their centerpoint a massive, sprawling, multi-limbed beast of a song. The title track for Marquee Moon is quite physically at the center of the record. Structurally, it painstakingly builds up shares of tension, broadcasting them at tightly framed intervals, which keeps the Verlaine/Lloyd riff battles from collapsing on themselves. ’Kissing the Beehive’ comes at the end of At Mount Zoomer, and it is as if, when you hear the distressed strains of the opening guitar, that all of the music that’s come before has been written in preparation for this moment. This track feels, structurally, like a series of concentrated hammer blows – the din clears only momentarily, so that you can hear Spencer Krug utter, “I wish I could believe in who you are; you hold your cock in the air and you call it a guitar; you cut your face on the glass and you call it good cinema.” Put these songs next to each other and the only similarity between them is their runtime. But in how they support the rest of the music on their attendant records, they are entirely symmetrical.
- Tom Verlaine. You can hear his voicings in both Dan and Spencer. When I asked Spencer about whether there was a correlation, he said that he was a huge fan of the way Verlaine’s vocals were recorded on Marquee Moon – flat, on a single track. Both he and Dan have wanted to record a song that way for a long time, but Spencer doesn’t yet feel entirely comfortable with his voice.
- The song ‘Fine Young Cannibals’ could easily fit within the context of Marquee Moon. ’FYC’ was what got me thinking about the possible relationship between these two records. Throughout, it just feels like a Television song – fluid but nervy, long repetitive loops interrupted by brief techincal bursts.
Again, there is possibly a longer list being made right now about how totally different the albums are. And I will read the list and I will most likely say, ‘well, yes.’ But I have a feeling I will always categorize them together under ‘Experimental Records I Still Want to Listen To.’
