Pitchfork

Welcome to the latest edition of Pitchfork's Guest List. Each week, we ask one of our favorite artists to fill us in on what they've been up to lately: which tracks they can't stop spinning, what books they can't put down, and what new bands they've caught on tour. This week it's Wolf Parade's Dan Boeckner, who talks to us the week before the release of their latest record, At Mount Zoomer, about 1980s underwater horror movies, a long-running science show on Canadian radio, and his favorite indestructible delay pedal.

>> Favorite New Songs of the Past Year

The Atlas Sound song "Activation"-- I think it's on one of the shorter EPs that [Bradford Cox] put up on his blog. I'm actually thinking of covering it on the next Handsome Furs tour. It's amazing.

And the first track on the Boris Rainbow album ["Raffesia"].

>> Favorite Older Songs at the Moment

"Fade to Black" by Metallica. I just bought the Metallica reissues on vinyl. Ride the Lightning-- I used to be in a cover band called Ride the Lightning in middle school-- was the shittiest-sounding recording, but the songs were really good, because Metallica were in a transitional period between being a thrash band and their juggernaut, Master of Puppets era. The remasters are nice because you can actually hear every individual part on it. It doesn't have that shitty 80s tinny metal production.

And "Hounds of Love" by Kate Bush. I don't know, I started getting into that song. Pretty much specifically that song, not really anything else off that record.

And another song called "Black Silk Stocking" by this band called Karisma. They're this really fucked up late-1970s European band that kind of sound like The Idiot-era Iggy Pop crossed with Neu! if Neu! were retarded. It's really, really good. They have a MySpace page with a bunch of old songs streaming on it.

That Bob Dylan bootleg, Live 1975: The Rolling Thunder Revue, the first track on that, "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You", I really love that. And I love the really shitty, coked-out reggae versions of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" and stuff like that. It's pretty great.

>> Favorite New Band

This band called the Witchies, who are from Montreal. It's this guy Chad Jones, who put out two records on Constellation under the name Frankie Sparo. [His records] were really sadly overlooked when they came out, because everybody who was reviewing them, from Wire or whatever the snobbier music magazines are, most of their reviews just paired it with the Silver Mt. Zion record. I think their first record came out at the same time, so almost every high-brow music publication was doing double reviews, and I don't think they put it in the right context; they just treated it like another Constellation band. But he was doing this male Nina Simone thing, which in retrospect was pretty far ahead of its time. He dissolved that a couple of years ago, and just a month ago started this band that does really, really great classic late-70s pre-punk music-- really great, catchy songs, almost like power-pop. It's just a three-piece, and they're fucking great. They don't have anything recorded yet, but they're really good.

>> Favorite Song Ever

I don't really have a favorite song of all time. My favorite song of all time changes, depending on what mood I'm in. I think that'd be really hard to answer. There's a lot of great songs. [pause] "Baba O'Riley", there you go. That's the best [laughs].

>> Last Great Show I Saw

That would be this Montreal band called Jerusalem in My Heart: it's this guy Radwan, who is from Lebanon, and an experimental guitarist, Sam Shalabi [from Shalabi Effect --Ed.]. Basically Radwan puts together a group-- usually a large group of women, between 15 and 20 girls-- and they dress up in hijabs and project films and play kind of a cross between Jackie-O Motherfucker and really heavy psych rock, with massive choral vocals. It's political just by its visual nature. I have never seen anyone perform like that before; it's not like watching a regular band.

Also I saw Nels Cline last night and that was amazing.

>> Last Great Film I Saw

That would be a tie, actually, between a movie called The Return-- I forget who directed it, a Russian director [Andrei Zvyagintsev --Ed.]-- it's this contemporary Russian film, which kind of reminds me of Roman Polanski. It's really, really heavy; it's a family psychodrama set in the suburbs of Moscow, and it's really slow. And the other movie I saw recently was Leviathan. It's exactly the same plot as Alien, but it takes place underwater. It came out in 1989, which is the year that underwater movies were the thing to do for all the big directors-- James Cameron made The Abyss that year. Leviathan is sort of a lesser entry in the underwater horror genre, but it was made by the guy who did Tombstone and Rambo: First Blood Part II, George P. Cosmatos. And Robo Cop, Peter Weller, delivers one of the most insane performances I've ever seen in a film. And it's got Ernie Hudson in it, too, which makes it even more like Alien. Ernie Hudson is killin' it in that movie.

>> Last Great Book I Read

I read the new William T. Vollmann book, Poor People. I guess it's not his newest one, but it's a nonfiction book. And for fiction, the Michel Houellebecq book The Possibility of an Island.

>> Favorite Piece of Musical Equipment

It's not very cool, but I have a problem finding the perfect delay pedal that won't...break down if I spill beer on it or something. But I bought the new Boss delay pedal, which is basically the white and blue Boss delay with a bunch of different functions on it; it has the classic 90s delay sound, and it's virtually indestructible. So I highly recommend it.

>> Favorite Record Shop

Probably Extreme Noise in Minneapolis. I was there last summer, and I got a Weirdos record, and I also got Misery Index on vinyl.

>> Best Purchase of the Past Year

I bought a shirt from a guy in Jamaica. [My wife] Alexei [Perry] and I were in Jamaica, and we met this guy Culture George, who apparently has a MySpace page [laughs], but he makes positive dancehall Rasta music. Alexi and I had made these shirts for the Handsome Furs tour, and one of them had a really shitty silkscreen of me with a broken nose on it. And Culture George was selling a shirt that was basically the same format, but just had the word "Honeycomb" on it and him screaming into a microphone, so that was the thing that brought me the most satisfaction, purchase-wise, this year.

>> Best Thing I Did This Year

I played in Moscow, that was the highlight of the tour. Being able to travel there, taking the train up for about 36, 48 hours straight without sleeping, just cruising around the city. It was really, really good.

>> Favorite Venue

I don't know, I have a lot of favorite venues. I like Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco; the staff there are totally amazing and nice, and the woman who runs it is just totally fantastic. And I also really like La Sala Rossa here in Montreal.

>> Favorite TV Show at the Moment

"The Wire", but that's kind of finished now. I've really been into this show "John From Cincinnati", which I guess just came out on DVD, and I think it actually got canceled. But it is truly bizarre, and the dialogue is pretty great. It's totally worth watching. It's almost off-putting in the first episode, but it lulls you into this weird kind of trance-state-- it's not like any other show I've ever seen on television. The only thing I can really compare it to is a way lighter version of "Twin Peaks".

>> Favorite Video Game at the Moment

I don't have a favorite video game, actually. I kind of stopped playing-- I think some epic fantasy on the Sega Genesis was about as far as I ever got with video games. I've tried, I've really tried; we had an Xbox in the van the last time we went on tour, and people were playing "Guitar Hero" and shit, and I just couldn't get into it. Video games kind of annoy me. I don't know why.

>> Favorite Radio Show

There's this show on CBC, our national radio here, called "Quirks & Quarks", which has been running since the 70s-- the heyday of Canadian Public Radio. All the hippies had graduated from college and gotten into their respective jobs in politics, which is where they were headed, so there was just a shitload of government funding. And these guys made this show called "Quirks & Quarks", which is a really heavy-duty science show. David Suzuki was on it a lot-- I think he hosted it briefly. It's totally great. They actually haven't changed the theme music since the 70s. It's like a bouncier version of the "Dr. Who" theme song. It's a fucking fantastic show. I think you can stream individual episodes, too.

>> My Ringtone

It's the theme song from "Dr. Who" [laughs]. But I was actually thinking of changing it to this audio clip I have, which I've kind of mixed into the record, of a man sobbing. Just quietly sobbing. I thought that would be pretty good.