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Paul Banks meets Beck. The second coming of Arcade Fire. The Ricola man. All combined as a well-defined, A-Team-style gang of thieves and lovers, Wolf Parade theatrically summarizes our young century’s indie rock savagery, desperation, simplicity, and warming temperature.

As we’ve all been domed over by the threat of stolen planes, launched missiles, and crashing shuttles, Wolf Parade employs a winterized lack of dependable mental health, half-panicky but smiling. Survivalist, but trying to survive themselves even more. In that way, it even evokes Beck’s jesterish self-deprecation. Kinda like you wish you could’ve said about 12 Monkeys: “Hey, at least they’re having fun while going crazy.”

Apologies to the Queen Mary has deep, choral atmosphere that feels like a live rehearsal in a hall big enough to fit what would seem like a huge ensemble, or at least a huge amount of friends and fans in the studio.

The album is a contrast of space and sound, however, as they could be as at home in an underground club.

(cough, Middle East)

Like a mouse riding an elephant, swinging power drums thunderously escort silvery guitars and a cracked-out flute on the agile “Grounds For Divorce”. This odd couple feeling is blended through the album, filling space, like an orchestra with an uncanny knack of playing grottos.

The band’s sound assumes an audience of demanding followers, never getting out of rhythm in its message. No matter the mood, they always keep clarity up their sleeve.

“We Built Another World” is a quick, angled fit pouting in self-pity about having a (”I had bad, bad time tonight”), but smacks of hidden cheer, too. And at times, they feel climactic and charmingly awkward, like a movie about a high school dance. Yet one exciting feature of the album is Wolf Parade’s ability to sound both half and twice their age, remniscient of the kids-and-no-parents tyranny Arcade Fire theorized.

“Fancy Claps” is war-like, adrenalized for battle, and emotes safety in numbers. The band flashes their sharp teeth and fires and reloads machine gun guitar and yodelicious banshee vocals with a more mature, threatening accuracy.

As an appendix of modern youth, Apologies to the Queen Mary runs the gamut of angsty Gen-X emotion, from unadulterated optimism, (”This heart’s on fire / It’s getting better all the time”) to self-realization and weakness. Like a bagpiper overlooking a cliff in desperation, “I’ll Believe In Anything” is pounding, primitive catharsis, but leaves a glimmer of hope that within the mumbling deep underneath lies a noble poet.

Possibly the lyric o’ the year: “But God doesn’t always have the best God damn plans” from “Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts”

Wolf Parade is the ideal indie band for 2005, a conglomeration of several of the most popular sounds of our decade so far. Memories of Interpol, Beck, Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, and The Rapture can be recalled from Wolf Parade’s distinct-but-not, slack-pot-psycho-mod sound. The evolution continues.