Expo 86 by Wolf Parade

Synthesizer guru Hadji Bakara could not join Wolf Parade for their third album, Expo 86: "Hadji Bakara's brain got so big that he accidentally got accepted into the University of Chicago to pursue a doctorate degree in English literature. What a draaaaag."

Bakara's absence was filled by singer Spencer Krug's varying note technique of repeating or drawing out words. And everyone in the band (Krug, Dan Boeckner, Arien Thompson, and Dante DeCaro) "added a small synthesizer to what they already did and poked at it intermittently in attempts to make up for Hadji's absence, and it seemed to work not bad." On "In the Direction of the Moon," they do heavy work with synths that sounds reminiscent to "Send Me An Angel" while traveling through space.

But let us not forget what Wolf Parade does so well. On "Yulia," an upbeat ode to love, Boeckner's voice compliments Krug's by not sounding so French-Canadian. "Cave-o-sapein" comes firing back with Krug's unbound voice telling this tale of a human who has regressed. An album-ender that throws the fast-paced, steady drum-work of Thompson and crisp riffs from the guitars of DeCaro and Boeckner into a capper that makes you wish there were just one more song left on the album.

• Album: Expo 86 (2010)
• Artist: Wolf Parade
• Label: Sub-Pop
• Songs: (1) Cloud Shadow on the Mountain (2) Palm Road (3) What Did My Lover Say? (It Always Had to Go this Way) (4) Little Golden Age (5) In the Direction of the Moon (6) Ghost Pressure (7) Pobody's Nerfect (8) Two Men in New Tuxedos (9) Oh You, Old Thing (10) Yulia (11) Cave-o-Sapien