It's a mark of cultural saturation that 2007's Total Magique, the second album by Montreal's We Are Wolves, feels stale only three years later. It's not that Total Magique has aged poorly; that album, with its multi-lingual lyrics, blistering, noisy synthesizer melodies, and aggressive rhythms, holds up well given the mass exhaustion with its dance-punk genre. But We Are Wolves' overall approach, as proved by their latest, Invisible Violence, has worn thin.
Even the band seems bored with their chosen genre, and they can't seem to muster the level of intensity that once set their electro-rock apart. These tepid tunes are spare where their predecessors were crowded with noise, and the mid-tempo dynamic is just animated enough to get asses on the dancefloor but not vigorous enough to inspire a frenzy. The band's buzzing analog synthesizers used to be the weapon of choice, but Invisible Violence favors guitars to drive the songs, leaving keyboards for bass flourishes or electronic decoration. These changes dilute what was once vibrant and original about the band.
The best song on Total Magique, "Fight & Kiss", pulses with sinister sexual energy and a dangerously relentless beat as Alexander Ortiz sings about volatile passion that conflates fighting and fucking. But the best songs on this new collection are sweaty, almost sweet disco tracks like "Blue", with its percolating groove and glossy melody. And the lyrics throughout are softly emotional ("I am going somewhere where my tears won't fall and my heart won't break," Ortiz sings on "Near Fear") or languorously poetic (the aptly named "Dreams" opens with the line, "Reflection of the moonlight on the suede of my skin"). There's nothing wrong with tempering one's stance or mellowing out-- and to We Are Wolves' credit, the slowest, spaciest numbers here are the most unexpected and most satisfying-- but the driving momentum and risky harshness of past efforts are missed. Invisible Violence finds We Are Wolves losing their taste for gory, carnal aggression, and with it, a little bit of their sense of self.
