#being wrong

MAGA moron: "I don't think President Trump posted that. I think somebody else posted that. It's whatever the media wants you to believe is what gets posted most of the time. Somebody else posted that. AI or somebody. President Trump didn't post that."

So now it’s not just denial — it’s AI did it? When something sounds good, it’s him. When something looks bad, suddenly it’s “someone else,” “the media,” or now… “AI.” That’s not critical thinking — that’s loyalty at all costs.

it turns out there IS such thing as "try" and sometimes when we try, we fail, and it makes us never want to try again.

Apologies to the Queen Mary Wolf Parade 2005, Sub Pop

Apologies to the Queen Mary is on the short list of ‘00s indie records that I’d consider masterpieces. The funny thing is that my list, as someone who was there (or there-adjacent), is pretty well fixed in time, whereas the consensus among Zoomer critics continues to morph in ways I’d never have figured. (Or maybe it’s not funny, really—just always how time and memory work.) In 2008, I would’ve bet my left pinkie that TV on the Radio (and especially Return to Cookie Mountain) would be the defining band of the era. Meanwhile, in 2024 the Killers are still riding the same five songs to a second greatest hits record and fifty times TVotR’s monthly residuals; the National have tween fans; and I hold a mug weird. Time clowns us all and Wolf Parade are a dad band now, owners of a few anthems from the era before genuinely weird indie bands could near the summits of the pop chart, economically compelled to continue touring small theatres together despite both Boeckner and Krug having been more invested in other, even less profitable projects for some time now.

Wolf Parade is one of those bands with two lead singers who sound indistinguishable before you know the group well, and instantly identifiable thereafter (like John and Paul of the Beatles, or Felix and Will of Chapo Trap House). They’re both yowlers who let their voices crack pubescently as shorthand for the frayed emotional spectrum they traffic in, given to barking and hooting to help drive their bric-a-brac compositions forward. Boeckner is a lanky post-punk looking fuckboy in roughly the Richard Hell mould, given to posing sweatily in torn undershirts and starting projects with a succession of raven-haired keyboard players he’s also dating. He loves motorik dance rock and Wire, but also has a substantial helping of Bruce Springsteen in his songwriting. Krug is a stocky, normal-looking guy who doesn’t really meet your eyes and self-deprecatingly called his solo project Moonface. He writes lyrics that sound like philosophy and love letters translated from an alien language, and prefers his music to both thwack and quaver.

Their similarities give Wolf Parade coherence, but much of their dynamism comes from how the two singers pass the controls back and forth. Backed by electronics tinkerer Hadji Bakara and Arlen Thompson, a drummer (crucially) capable of serving as a rhythm section unto himself, Krug and Boeckner find the perfect balance between Krug’s experimental art collective predilections and Boeckner’s slyly sexual rock ‘n’ roll heart. Krug leads with the empty warehouse strut of “You Are a Runner and I Am My Father’s Son”; Boeckner parries with the hooky acoustic rocker “Modern World”; Krug closes with the brittle seven-minute dirge “Dinner Bells”; Boeckner responds with the pinkly-hued Suicide-Springsteen collab “This Heart’s on Fire.”

Both Boeckner and Krug have made wilder, stranger music elsewhere, and there are plenty of other brilliant Wolf Parade songs to be found across their subsequent records. But Apologies remains the greatest blend of their particular talents they ever managed, a perfect example of two guys pushing each other to do their best work. With luck, a future generation will reconsider Wolf Parade and its many, many satellites (Sunset Rubdown, Operators, Handsome Furs, Frog Eyes, Swan Lake, Divine Fits…) as one of the most interesting micro-scenes the whole post-alternative rock era produced. And if not, I’ll still be here spinning the record a few times a year, believing in it all all over.

“I do like him. I love him. He’s not proud. I was wrong. I was… entirely wrong about him.”

PRIDE & PREJUDICE (2005), dir. Joe Wright

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You know actually this is the line I love the most about P&P, the whole I was… entirely wrong about him.

People nowadays are so fucking afraid of being proven wrong or being wrong at all (for no reason btw, being wrong means you get to experience growth, it's not a flex to be the wisest bitch around forever, that literally means you'll never grow again?) and I find it actually difficult to find books or people who will go "oh yeah I was so wrong" and be totally chill about that.

But I love being wrong, because sure it knocks me down a few pegs but also it opens up my world and I get to see a new perspective?

And I think you only really grow when you have perspectives being opened out the ass, you know what I mean? like "damn I never saw it that way" and then your brain fucking EXPANDS.