Wolf Parade's weirdest video

Will you actually believe in everything?

The mid-2000s: anything could happen. Like a group of British Columbian punks living in Montreal, totally broke despite being one of the buzziest new rock bands of the year, filming a video in Hungary on 35-mm film, that involves 17th-century duels and a cast of real-life bizarre characters — a video in which the band’s two singers don’t even appear, and drummer Arlen Thompson, dressed like an extra from Amadeus, chases a chicken while dodging cannonballs.

That is the story of Wolf Parade’s video for their 2005 song “I’ll Believe in Anything,” from the album Apologies to the Queen Mary — an album they’re touring for its 20th anniversary. It can be seen as a metaphor for much of their career. “That video shoot is indicative of Wolf Parade’s entire career arc: rolling, absurd disaster,” says singer/guitarist Dan Boeckner. “And we ended up with a pretty good video.

Wolf Parade play Toronto’s Concert Hall this Tuesday (with TV Erased, featuring members of We Are Wolves and Suuns) and a sold-out show on Wednesday (with Kiwi Jr.). This week’s live music listings are here.

The video in question is like mid-aughts indie-rock version of Flirting With Disaster, but set in middle Europe. Many explosives are involved, and at one point hot-air balloons were seriously considered. Oh, and it was made on borrowed equipment owned by a cross-dressing medical fraudster on the lam from U.S. authorities and who now makes movies about lizard people for Hungarian television when not moonlighting with a Led Zeppelin cover band.

For paid subscribers only, here are transcripts from my conversations with both guitarist/singer Dan Boeckner and drummer Arlen Thompson, conducted in 2019 while researching Hearts on Fire, about the making of the video: