I love Spencer Krug. He’s the keyboardist and one of the vocalists from Wolf Parade, and other Canadian bands named after various animals, like Frog Eyes and Swan Lake. His “solo” band –– not named after an animal –– is called Sunset Rubdown. Their last album, “Shut Up I Am Dreaming,” feels like a kid manically scribbling outside of the lines in a coloring book. But overall, the album sounded like a Wolf Parade side project instead of something all of its own. Their newest album, “Random Spirit Lover,” makes the coloring book come alive, and it sounds like a crazy carnival with weird antics happening in each circus tent and in every booth of the midway. Don’t like carnivals? Neither do I, but it’s just what comes to mind, but that doesn’t mean that this album isn’t amazing, because it is, and I think it’s one of the year’s best. We finally hear Sunset Rubdown become something extremely different than Wolf Parade.
“The Mending of the Gown” starts up the album with a song that sounds like chickens running around with their heads cut off in fast-forward, riding trapeze all over a circus tent. The album continues to explore polar emotions with melodramatic explosions and with hidden melodies and quiet contemplation. Whenever there is a pause in a song, it is there for the emphasis of Krug’s lyrics, which keep getting better with each record. The lyrics are a lot more narrative this time around, and the narrative is a place for Krug to explore his lyrics. Krug has an effect to make what he says sound profound. In “Winged/Wicked Things,” Krug’s lyrics stand out when he shouts “Chaos is yours and chaos is mine / And chaos is love and they say love is blind”. It’s so simple but very powerful.
“Up On Your Leopard, Upon the End of Your Feral Days” is one of the best songs on the album that builds up in Arcade Fire sing-along fashion, and transitions into “The Courtesan Has Sung.” Bouncing and echoing vocals and yelps build up to a melody that recalls the theme from Tim Burton’s “Edward Scissorhands” –– it sends shivers down my spine. The instrumentation on the album is amazing, bombastic, and dizzying at times, and Krug’s keyboard skills are still the anchor to this band, but the other band members get to show off their skills too with great guitar parts and haunting background vocals.
Sunset Rubdown has become more than just a side project of Krug’s, and has become a complete entity with its own sound filled with the eccentricities that Krug brings to all of his bands, but more amplified. If you haven’t heard of Sunset Rubdown and just think of a massage parlor when you hear “Sunset Rubdown,” buy this record and you will no longer think of fragranced oils, crystals, rocks and other things, because “Random Spirit Lover” is one of the year’s best.
Grade: A
