Sunset Rubdown – Random Spirit Lover
Posted on March 8, 2008 - Filed Under Arts and Entertainment
Random Spirit Lover is Sunset Rubdown’s third full length album and their first to sound like a full band collaboration rather than a Spencer Krug solo project. This is immediately evident in the lengthy intro of album opener “The Mending of the Gown,” where each band member stretches out their musical legs in preparation for the ensuing nearly hour-long journey into a world of horses and whores before Krug breaks through with his best 50′s jukebox swagger that would make Misfits-era Danzig cry tears of blood. And THANK HEAVENS, for Sunset Rubdown is finally out of Spencer Krug’s bedroom and into the stars!
There’s no better way to open an album than with a quintessential representation of a new muscular sound of four musicians feeding off each other and hitting all at once. And “The Mending of the Gown” delivers. The melodies are looser and the guitars more playful than anything we’ve heard from Sunset Rubdown. Keyboardist and background vocalist Camilla Wynn Ingr plays the Dan Boeckner role of pushing and pulling against Krug’s vocals, bringing the song to heights that Krug’s voice simply could not reach on his own. Their exchanges of “this one’s for Maggie, this one’s for Sam” create a brilliant tension that’s both beautiful and way too sublime to not listen on repeat. It’s the finest moment of 2007…that is, until ten seconds later when the gorgeously terrifying “I have lusted after you….THE WAY BLOOD SUCKERS DO!” explodes and goosebumps it’s way into the sing-along hall of fame.
The brilliance doesn’t stop there. In “Magic Vs. Midas,” Jonny Greenwood-esque guitar jabs permeate an otherwise lovely keyboard ride across the universe before Krug’s hypnotic mantra “You made up a list of your luckiest stars, and you made me familiar to you in the dark.” It’s moments like this that separate his songwriting from contemporaries like Frog Eyes’ Carey Mercer. Though rather vague, abstract, and self-referential (the horses have galloped over from 2006′s Shut Up I Am Dreaming) like Swan Lake band mate Dan Bejar, Krug’s lyrics always packs a tangible emotional resonance. Some of his finest moments are the most subtle; the one’s that reveal their wonder and heartbreak only after repeated listens, as in “Winged/Wicked Things” when he sings “and the pattern of flight is chaotic and blind,
but it’s right because chaos is yours and it’s mine.” It’s the kind of beauty that can match such Krug penned classics as “I’ll Believe in Anything” and “All Fires.”
The only criticism I could come up with is that the Cocteau-Twins-playing-D&D vibe of “Colt Stands Up, Grows Horns” is a bit of a momentum killer smack dab in the middle of the album. Also, closer “Child-Heart Losers” pales in comparison to the previous album’s devastating closer of “Shut Up I Am Dreaming of Places Where Lovers Have Wings.” But that is indeed a mighty tune to match.
Random Spirit Lover is yet another notch on the belt of Spencer Krug, who has been cranking out quality albums at a 60′s hit-makers pace. This is that annual autumn release that turns everything a different color and never leaves your cd player/turntable/ipod/whatever. Get into this now before you’re complaining four years down the line that he is past his prime.
Rob Caser is a contributer to the Music News, Views & Reviews section of the Music By Day music blog.
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