I'm reviewing Sunset Rubdown's new album, Dragonslayer, right now. I can't really say that I enjoy the album very much. It's much too abstract for me in ways... how the distorted guitar just kinda wanders off, how it doesn't always come together in clean, repeated melodies and patterns, how it just doesn't seem very mathematical. I suppose it's experimental. Wait, isn't experimental supposed to still be mathematical? I'm confused. I'm a big fan of Spencer Krug, and everything he does with Wolf Parade, but in Sunset Rubdown, his side project, he takes it a bit too far away from normalcy at times.That being said, I can't really get over how much I really like a few songs on the album ("Apollo and the Buffallo and Anna Anna Anna Oh!," "Silver Moons") and how much I LOVE "Idiot Heart." So, basically, what I'm saying is buy this album for the first three songs.
"Idiot Heart": dissect:
This song is just so, so cool. It starts with an echoey, muted guitar effect, jagged electric bursts, and some bare lyrics. But THEN, a barrage of bells and twinkles! Right as Krug proclaims "Move around." Ok! They have me bouncing in my seat. Then the electric guitar gets proportionately more squiggly and creeps between all the chiming. And then Krug starts referencing Icarus (greek mythology: Icarus escaped Crete using wings made by his father but was killed when he flew too close to the sun and the wings melted). And Krug starts hyperventilating with whoa-oh-oh-oh's and repeated lyrical phrases like, "look at you go." Enter string arrangements, along with a combo of bells and squawky guitar. It just grooves, it has my head bobbing. And the final line of the song makes no sense to me at all: "I hope that you die in a decent pair of shoes. You got a lot more walking to do."
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