Rapid fire May is loco yo gig reviews 5: Sunset Rubdown - Crawdaddy

People should be allowed to have fun. I'm not a killjoy. If folks don't get in my way they can do whatever they want.

But sometimes I think folks should be breathalysed before being allowed into a gig. And I'm not talking about Spencer Krug here who played the gig at Crawdaddy last night completely plastered with seemingly no effect on his playing save for the second to last song where the tempo went to shit a couple of times. But enough talk of idiots who can't control their flailing elbows.

Save for the somewhat lengthy waits between songs, sometimes due to Krug scrambling around trying to find his beer, sometimes by the fact that the band had to climb around the really tight stage to get to whatever instrument they were playing at the time, I've no complaints about Sunset Rubdown's set. Unlike on Friday when their momentum was broken up a lot at the start by broken strings things went a lot more smoothly and save for "Snakes Got A Leg" and "3 Colours" I think they managed to squeeze pretty much every song I wanted to hear into their 80 minute set, including a completely sublime closing take on "The Empty Threats Of Little Lord" which featured Camilla Wynn Ingr using what appeared to be a pocket vibrator on her glockenspiel*. The new Wolf Parade (which has grown on me since I first heard it) is out soon and the band will be reconvening to tour the states to coincide with that and presumably they'll make it to Europe later in the year so god knows when Sunset Rubdown will be back. Not soon enough whenever it is.

By the way, support band Speck Mountain should brush up on their Geography. UK tour? 800 years, 800 YEARS GODAMNIT. Stupid Venezuelans.

* Glockenspiel is not a euphemism for anything.

If you're going to Broken Social Scene on Tuesday.

You've made a bad call, great as they are they've been here loads already and Sunset Rubdown are playing their debut Irish gig that night. (Also No Age are playing a late show upstairs in Whelans, doors at 10:30 but I'd sooner see BSS then them).

But the main reason for this post is to say that Broken Social Scene will be playing one of their mammoth gigs on Tuesday. 3 hour set, no support, band on at 8.

So now you know.

Sunset Rubdown Dublin tickets on sale.

HERE

Sunset Rubdown Irish date

05-20 Dublin, Ireland - Crawdaddy

Here's the rest of the confirmed dates.

05-16-18 Minehead, England - Butlins Holiday Centre (Explosions in the Sky ATP)
05-19 Manchester, England - Moho
05-21 Bristol, England - Thekla Social
05-22 London, England - The Luminaire
05-26 Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso
05-28 Copenhagen, Denmark - Loppen
05-31 Stockholm, Sweden - Debaser
06-02 Utrecht, Netherlands - Ekko


MP3: Sunset Rubdown - The Empty Threats Of Little Lord (live)

Sunset Rubdown playing Explosions In The Sky Curated ATP

May 16-18.

I can feel it in my waters.

Sunset Rubdown - European Tour

May apparently. I'll give my first born to the promoter that makes this happen in Ireland.

These things come in threes - Part 3: "Give me your eyes I need sunshine."

Don't slouch boy.

Moving away from the Beatles theme but sticking with Robert Pollard somewhat. Probably the distinctive aspect of Pollard's musical career has been how fast he writes, in addition to the 16 GBV albums he's also released 13 solo albums since 1996, including 3 this year.

Probably the closest thing we have to that kind of prolific rate in today's generation is Spencer Krug. Krug however spreads his output out amongst more projects (Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, Swan Lake, Frog Eyes, Fifths Of Seven) and seems to be a bit more collaborative in his working methods. He has however contributed songs to at least 10 albums and EP's in the past 4 years.

The song I'm posting today is perhaps more a curiosity than an example of Krug's finest work (see this post on Darragh's blog for one of those) and from the not very widely heard first album
by the project that is most solely Krug's. The song had it's title shortened, was rerecorded, and much more fully realised on the first Wolf Parade album and this version sounds more like a rough demo from Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam than anything else that Krug is currently putting out.

MP3: Sunset Rubdown - I'll Believe In Anything, You'll Believe in Anything from Snakes Got A Leg

On the subject of Spencer Krug ...

My favourite "Krug" song from the 3 bands that he writes songs for in no particular order:

• Wolf Parade - "I'll believe in anything".
• Sunset Rubdown - "Stadiums and shrines II".
• Swan Lake - "All fires".
  

First Impressions: Sunset Rubdown - Random Spirit Lover

Spencer Krug is a bit of a slut. Over the course of the past few years he's contributed to albums by or been a member of Wolf Parade, Islands, Swan Lake, Frog Eyes, Fifths of Seven and Sunset Rubdown. Not that that's a bad thing as such and in terms of high output underground figures he could be the closest thing this decade has to Robert Pollard.

Random Spirit Lover is the third album from Sunset Rubdown; the band that probably could most accurately be referred to as "Krug's band" as he's the sole songwriter as opposed to the seemingly more collaborative arrangements of Wolf Parade and Swan Lake or the contributing role he's played with Islands and Frog Eyes, in fact I believe the earliest SR gigs featured Krug, a keyboard and a kick drum; and the follow up to last year's Shut Up I Am Dreaming.

My first thought upon hearing this is "wow, he's been hanging out with Carey Mercer a LOT." This is a much more weird, Frog Eyes sounding record compared to the big anthemic sounds that were on the last record (and a million miles away from the lo-fi sound of Snakes Got A Leg the first Sunset Rubdown album). I'm not sure if there's anything here that touches "Stadiums And Shrines II" but there's plenty of good stuff on the album and overall I suspect that it may just shade the last album. As for whether or not it surpasses the other Wolf Parade related project from this year, The Handsome Furs' Plague Park, too early to tell.

Random Spirit Lover is out in North America on October 9th via Jagjaguwar.

MP3: Sunset Rubdown - The Mending Of The Gown from Random Spirit Lover