The mighty troupe of howling, French-Canadian warriors that is Wolf Parade have returned in the form of a beautiful mess of an LP3, titled Expo 86 after the Vancouver World’s Fair. All dudes in this band are wolves in sense that the wolf is a lone scavenger, toiling and cultivating their countless side-projects as much as their work in this band. So perhaps in embracing the idea of an ‘expo’, a world showcase of cultures and talents, the guys all find a common ground with which to let those solo sounds and styles meld together. After repeated listens, this expo certainly sounds that way.

Tribal toms open first track “Cloud Shadow on the Mountain,” where the impish wizard behind keys, Spencer Krug, lays down a time and place to set the scene. Krug barks, “Cloud shadow on the mountain, cloud shadow on the plain, cloud shadow make an island nation on the fabric of this terrain,” at once melding the role of theater director he often assumes in Wolf Parade with the role of mystic he has taken in his other main project, the mighty Sunset Rubdown. Those opening drums both tickle and tease the ear, as they sound so reminiscent of Krug’s most recent, proggy leanings on last summer’s Sunset Rubdown LP Dragonslayer that you start to doubt this will sound like the Wolf Parade you know and love. Krug’s evocation of the scorpion in “Cloud Shadow,” and the negative female traits associated with the astrological sign Scorpio, ferry him further down the path of an oracle. But then the chorus kicks in, with its traditional Wolf Parade yelps and the full band behind him. It is then we know that these assertions and contentions come from the pack, and what’s more, that every member of the band wants to “never be born as a scorpion.”

This somewhat groovier, more relaxed and tropical Wolf Parade flows through the rest of the record. Other frontman Dan Boeckner follows the opener with the chugging, earnest traveling song “Palm Road.” As Boeckner sings of trash and gold, places modern in pleasures but ancient in sin are conjured, a tropical Babylon. Next comes “What Did My Lover Say?,” which starts off as a traditionally angular, synth-heavy Krug jam before the steel drums come in and carry the melody off into the bitter breeze.

The first act ends neatly with the instant anthem “Little Golden Age,” Boeckner pleading to someone, “You were in the bedroom signing radio songs, sing ‘em loud, sing ‘em all night, Emily, needed something to help you along...” and later “Please please please, little golden age, freeze freeze freeze.” There is no mention of this Emily elsewhere on the record that we have found, and so it’s quite easy for one to imagine Boeckner is letting something significant out here. His pleading that this golden age stay implies somehow it comes and goes with the mood of this woman, whom he knows everything about except how to get close to her. It is followed by more noodling, more chaos and another act for the record.

Wolf Parade always sequence their albums in such a fashion as to imply a story arc, and also release them commercially at interesting times in the calendar year. Apologies to The Queen Mary came out in fall, and the synthesized blips followed the stop and start drumming and the gypsy keys to create sounds of beautiful decay, autumn style. Despite the morose mood, it carried itself along peak after peak, classic after classic, espousing ennui, sorrow and misery much in the way a seminal punk band does.

Meanwhile, both Sophomore LP At Mount Zoomer and Expo 86 are summer albums, trading decay for swelter and wallowing for floating. Between the two, Zoomer is more muscular, as the acid-washed tangents and grooves it lingers on (which some pundits say lasts too long) become valleys where the songs make space to function as moral parables of the mind. In this respect, Expo 86 splits the difference quite well. It certainly has the poignancy and the punch of Apologies, but grooves and two-steps enough to get even the least bookish of asses shaking like Zoomer.

What makes Expo such a thrilling listen is the manner in which it accomplishes this feat, getting your ears on board with a hook and then stretching and twisting it to strange new places. Hadji Bakara on sequencers and noises was a welcome member of Wolf Parade for their first two albums, a sonic intermediary between two brazen front-men's often clashing styles. And the fact that his presence is not so missed on this new album should not make light of his abilities, but show how better Boeckner and Krug have gotten at letting their own musical paths cross from time to time. The 80’s feel of this album and its signature synthesized noises function solely off of the interplay between these two guys, and the album is all the more fluid and focused it its chaos because of it.

Krug jam “Two Men in Tuxedos” seems a perfect comment on this, although as he belts, “Hey, teacher, love is never dead!” it still seems unclear who Krug is addressing. “Oh, you, Old Thing” is the album’s only real ballad, but delivered like a cabaret Billy Joel song on absinthe, it doesn’t slow the pace at all. “Yulia” lets Boeckner work out some of his angst with Russian women, and then the spectacle closes with “Cave-O-Sapien.” It’s a thrilling song and a galloping conclusion to a rapturous album. What the expo lacks in poignancy it more than makes up for in urgency, and most importantly, the sound of a renewed bond between brothers and the dogs that live in the moon.