This past week, my 9 month old nephew, Spencer (you may remeber him from such posts as this one), finally learned to crawl.  It came with no tears, lots of baby grunting, and a certain aversion to actually mastering that fundamental formula of motion.  You see, Spencer kept trying to walk before he learned to crawl, which is not too different, metaphorically speaking, to most of the human race.  It seems that we are an impatient species, and we can waste our time mastering one skill before moving onto another.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like for Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade if, rather than crawling on to their other bands–Boeckner to Handsome Furs, and Krug to Sunset Rubdown–they would have spent a bit more time together working as Wolf Parade?  What would Wolf Parade’s At Mount Zoomer have sounded like if the guys had kept some of the better songs from their two respective side projects and turned them into Wolf Parade tracks?  Would I have liked that album any better?

There are times (even though none are coming to mind at this moment) when an artists tries to stretch him or herself too thin over multiple projects, usually resulting in a watered down mess.  For some reason, they never manage to capture that magical, elusive quality that made things click in their work with their proper band.  Yet, someone like Dan Bejar of Destroyer/New Pornographers/Hello, Blue Roses/Swan Lake (where he plays with Krug) has his hand in so many projects simultaneously without really compromising his work under each moniker.  Swan Lake sounds nothing like The New Pornographers, who sound nothing like Hello, Blue Roses, who don’t resemble Destroyer at all.  If you asked Bejar, I think he would be hard-pressed to say that any one of these acts ranks above the others.  It’s a lot like comparing apples to oranges really.

I know that neither Krug nor Boeckner really ever referred to Wolf Parade as their “main project”; Handsome Furs and Sunset Rubdown exist not as side projects but as equals of their work together. So the fact that two of the  three bands have released albums that would qualify for the Polaris Music Prize this year makes things very interesting from my perspective.  There’s a pretty good possibility that both albums could end up on this year’s long list, but from that point on, it’s any body’s guess whether they’ll both make it to the short list.  I’ve really been thinking about this Wolf Parade vs. Handsome Furs debate for awhile now and I’m still kind of left scratching my head at the end of it.  I would consider both among my favourite Canadian albums of the past year.  I know that At Mount Zoomer didn’t quite make it to my 2008 year-end list, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t like it.  Face Control had me pretty excited earlier this year, but I haven’t really been listening to it a whole lot lately.  And just to mess things up even further, Krug has the new Sunset Rubdown album Dragonslayer coming out just days shy of being considered for this year’s prize;  just imagine if all three albums had come out before May 31, 2008.

In the end, due to the cross-recording nature of the Canadian music scene, it’s not totally a stretch to think that a person may have multiple nominations for the award under multiple monikers.  After all, isn’t the whole point of the Polaris Prize to award musicians based on the merit of their work, and not some convoluted formula that discounts work in one band over another?  I think it would be very interesting if there were a  list with both Wolf Parade and Handsome Furs on it (although, I think that one is more likely to get that nod than the other, and no, I’m not telling…yet).  We’ll have to wait and see what happens when the long list comes out.

MP3: Handsome Furs “All We Want Baby, Is Everything”
MP3: Wolf Parade “Call It A Ritual”
Facebook: Handsome Furs
Myspace: Handsome Furs
Buy: Handsome Furs Face Control
Myspace: Wolf Parade
Facebook: Wolf Parade
Buy: Wolf Parade At Mount Zoomer