Before Wolf Parade’s last show ahead of an indefinite hiatus, singer and keyboard player Spencer Krug spoke to The Globe in Vancouver as he walked down the city’s Main Street for Monday evening’s show. It was Krug’s only interview about the band’s history and uncertain future.
So, the end: for now and a long time, indefinite hiatus – or the end for good?
There are no future plans. This is a lot more of a break than what would have been between the albums that already exist. And those breaks, we always had plans when we would get back together and make the next record. Right now we have no plans of when we’ll get back together.
This could be the last show. We’re not so naive to think it couldn’t be. We’re also not so naive to be so black-and-white as to say it definitely is our last show, you know?
It was never really said, after Toronto last year, why an indefinite hiatus. There were one or two bits about the other projects, but those have always been on the go.
We’re just trying to be transparent and say, “We’re going to stop playing music together right now because we all have other things we want to do.” We all agree that if Wolf Parade were to make another record – say like this fall, hypothetically – that it would be kind of [crappy]. All of our hearts are, at least creatively, they’re split into different spaces right now, that Wolf Parade is not in.
How do you mean, different creative spaces?
Wolf Parade has never been a laboratory for music in the same way Sunset Rubdown was for me, or that Moonface is for me, or that Handsome Furs is for Dan.
Wolf Parade, when we started the first record, was a process of discovery, discovering what the band sounded like, what we were good at. In the first couple years it became very obvious what we were good at. What came out the best and most natural, especially live, was just playing rock and roll, for the lack of a better term. It’s rock music. You end up wanting to try new things, and experiment, and branch out, and I do, and Dan does, and Wolf Parade is not the place for us to do that, for now. It might be in the future.
There doesn’t seem to have been discord, even if there are the different creative directions.
We love each other like brothers. We’re not doing this because there’s any bad blood or anything but, creatively, it feels like it’s time to stop. Some days you look around and you’re like, “Why are we quitting?” But we are. But that doesn’t mean, like I said, it’s not a definitive ending, tonight.
How do you feel about where Wolf Parade ended up? The reviews were always good but the records got less and less attention, and they never cracked through commercially, not to be too crass.
[Laughs.] What you’re saying is how do I feel about ours being a steady downhill slope versus a steady uphill slope?
Kind of. I mean, in terms of the material, I don’t see it that way, but critics put Queen Mary way up above everything else. Pitchfork readers voted Expo 86 in the top 10 most underrated for last year.
I didn’t know that.
But commercially?
It’s fine, it’s true, it’s reality. I mean, commercially, Wolf Parade plateaued early on, and stayed on the same level, in terms of making a living of it. And where we plateaued is a very comfortable, nice place to be, with enough respect for each other and for our label and people who like our music that we could keep putting out records and tour and pay rent but still not be under heavy scrutiny. No one’s watching us too closely. No one cares that much about Wolf Parade.
