Music Review: Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer

Sunset Rubdown opens one world and shuts down another all in the span of the few opening moments of Dragonslayer, crystallizing everything that makes the Montreal band art-rock gods and transforming it into easy, accessible, rich and adventurous pieces of work that meld together as one electric, exhilarating tale.

“I believe in growing old with grace,” vocalist and leader Spencer Krug pronounces boldly near the middle of “Silver Moons.” He has the conviction and zeal of a wide-eyed soapbox preacher at first, but then cracks of misery and openness emerge as he belts the second line: “I believe she only loves my face.”

This drama, this sort of spectacular immensity, infuses every single second of Dragonslayer. It turns each piece of music into an epic and transforms each word into a portion of some fantastical script. As listeners, we hold on tight to our armchairs and to our wine glasses and to our hearts while Krug unveils his obsessions, fears, complications, and ponderings.

As a record, Dragonslayer is both astonishingly complex and dangerously simple.

The complexity arises out of Krug’s tendency towards the metaphor. Lyrically he is full of them. Sometimes he is full of shit, too. His affinity to unfolding cavernous, shadowy metaphors to speak simple truths is part of the mystery that engulfs Dragonslayer, but his ability to break through the facade every so often with a couplet of aching ease is what keeps the flame burning.

The simplicity is in the theatrics of it all. Sunset Rubdown ventures down innumerable hallways of musical genres, never settling in one district for too long. There’s new wave to be found on “Idiot Heart,” for instance, and there are marches and bells hiding in the grain of “Silver Moons.”

This brave, uncomplicated presentation of music, of art, strikes at the very heart of the music lover in need of something diverse and honest.

Article Author: Jordan Richardson

Jordan Richardson is a Canadian freelance writer and ne'er-do-well. He writes stuff here and here.

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