All those years ago, when I still went to the beach, I used to love the feeling of laying in bed after a day of swimming. A few hours in the waves meant that by the time I lay down, my bed was a boat that rolled over the swelling ocean like the gentle hills of a golf course. Its been a really long time since I even remembered that feeling, but music can do all kinds of weird things to your head if you let it, and so the nostalgia is dragon-shaped in the form of Sunset Rubdown's glorious new album.
When your favourite band releases a new album, the first thing you notice is change. Random Spirit Lover threw an entire orchestra in a blender (with a healthy dose of electricity) and spread it all over every single song. Dragonslayer is more careful in it's approach, each song has a particular instrumental focus, paired so lovingly with Spencer Krug's lyrical whimsy that it conjures images of those weird cousins you know, who touch each other a little too much. But hey, they're happy right?
But while the music has been turned down to 5, said lyrical whimsy has been cranked to 11. This is an album of words, it's heart and soul made from random grabs of Greek mythology, American history and the ever-pitiful human condition. It's sometimes happy, sometimes sad and sometimes darkly funny. It always punches, but never painfully. Like the stupid inflatable hammers you get in a showbag, squeaking harmlessly off the head of a very stern father while he tries to read the paper. International Business (Squeak Squeak Squeak) could be the alternate title for every song on the album.
When the guitar is in charge, you can almost forget about the words and rock the fuck out to the musical equivalent of a Christmas cracker going off in slow motion for 6 minutes at a time. But why would you read the blurb and say "Yes what an accomplished novel." Its a cookbook you knob. The music is the possibility, and Krug's wandering vocals give it an unreal reality.
And unreal it is. He doesn't sing about bringing in his bins, or chatting up someone at the library, or doing his tax return. Spencer Krug is a dreamer, because dreams are better. I have a favourite everything, Sunset Rubdown is my favourite band because dreams are better.
Icarus and his idiot heart are more real than anyone you will ever know. Paper lace is better than designer denim. A black swan outside the palace is better than a brick letterbox outside your boring grey apartment. The ocean is better than my shitty cream coloured room.
I like it alot. Case dimissed. Order in the court. Squeak Squeak Squeak.
