Customer Reviews

Random Spirit Lover

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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Spencer Krug is insane. In the best possible way of course.

And Sunset Rubdown has expanded their sound in every direction, with the gloriously dense third album "Random Spirit Lover." While their music hasn't changed drastically in sound, it's grown deeper and denser and much, much weirder -- in fact, it may be too dense to hear in one sitting.

It opens with a sprightly tangle of growling squealing guitar, energetic piano, bells and blurry synth. "He was a man of many nations, had a hundred souls and a hundred to go/He was a man of many nations, two hearts, two hands, it's a slippery slope," Krug yowls over the bouncy, cluttered melody. "It was the tender mending of this slender gown/that brought me bending to the ground..."

You might want to just turn it off after that, and take a little while to digest it. Or you can move on to the tremulous, mournfully quirky "Magic vs. Midas," which serves as a little oasis after the craziness of the first song.

But things don't really get any simpler after that -- we have twinkly marches, ominous indie-rock with a chorale, stately crescendos of ringing guitars, rippling dark electronica, and cascading eruptions of crazy harps and keyboard. Occasionally, they mix in a gentle echoing experimental song, a fuzzfolk pop song, or a tinkl little ballad like "Stallion."

You can really tell in "Random Spirit Lover" that Sunset Rubdown is no longer merely a side band for people from Pony Up, Wolf Parade, et cetera. Their music has really blossomed into a dense, intense combination of experimental music (a la Animal Collective) and pop tunes. You can dance to it, but it might make you dizzy.

Each melody is made of a bunch of loosely intertwined instrumentals -- winding riffs that vary from ringing to fuzzy, solid drums and fast-moving piano setting the beat. And the whole thing is wound in a dizzying, colourful blanket of shimmering glockenspiel, harmonica, and swells of windy keyboard.

Krug is responsible for most of the vocals, and it takes a little while to get used to his yowling, dramatic voice. But he sings lyrics of staggering lyrical beauty ("You say it's the hair of ghosts/So I say it's the white hair of Poseidon/Ebbing in the tide in some dead sea"), and more than a little tenderness.

Even more striking, those lyrics are crammed with symbolism and dreamlike imagery -- leopards, virgins, snow and ice, the Shroud of Turin, and lots of diamonds and violins. There are plenty of repeating motifs in these songs, tangling them almost into a theme album.

Your ears may overflow while you're listening to "Random Spirit Lover," but the rich experimental pop and astounding lyrics make a wonderful way to be overwhelmed. Definitely a must-listen.

There's nothing out there similar to this.
That the album has gathered such a mediocre reaction from critics is a testament solely to the hysterically dense and over the top nature of the album.

This will be rediscovered at some point, as Moby Dick was over 50 years after publication, and it will be held as a classic of art.

This album is amazing. It's weird enough that you don't get turned on to it immediately, but in the same way it can be appreciated endlessly. I thought Shut up I am Dreaming was un-toppable but this album in my opinion goes a little further than that album. Listen to it, again, and again, and again. Lyrics, melodies, everything. This album is in pretty good contention for being one of the top albums of this decade.

Sunset Rubdown has been the most difficult band for me to get into in recent times. I can listen to heavy metal, I can listen to noise, I can listen to metal, I can listen to Kanye (sometimes), but I could not figure out Sunset Rubdown for the longest time. When a friend handed me Random Spirit Lover, I gave it a cursory listen through once and didn't touch it again for almost a year. To say the least it's an intimidating album.

Looking back, what makes it so intimidating is its melding of pop with experimentation. Krug, who is among the best, if not the best, musicians/song-writers of this generation gets terribly strange on this album while managing to stay within the limits of pop music. At first, the result is an intimidating mishmash. You end up not knowing where to start, when to end (either right now or never), if you like the music. But, in the end, it becomes intelligible and then you see the Canadian's true genius.

He has taken pop music to a new level. Where other recent pop innovators (i.e. - Animal Collective) have taken pop music and mixed it with noise, added strange samples, Krug is entirely within the realm of pop music. Using just the normal pop/rock setup (guitars, vocals, drums, keyboard), Sunset Rubdown has managed to create something unsettling yet truly grand.

[This is a summarised version of my full review, which may be read at http://mog.com/cogwheeldogs]

Wit in music. Not in lyrics, which is easy enough - but in the way one chord leads to another, or a melody appears, or pauses are used. It's a rare phenomenon: one found in the work of classical composers such as Handel and Haydn, say. A (rather more modern) witty album, in my opinion, is Weezer's Pinkerton (leagues better than anything else by the band) - and - now - Sunset Rubdown's Random Spirit Lover.

Few artists or bands successfully combine aspects of everything from troubadour-esque, quasi-Medieval balladry, through Music Hall, to 80s synth-pop. This outstanding ability to bring together disparate musical elements sets the band alongside artists such as Joanna Newsom - different though their respective `sounds' and influences may be. There's a baseline of irreverence and deliberate messiness, backed up by strong musicianship, that is reminiscent of Dresden Dolls - and a marriage between traditional rock instrumentation and the unashamedly synthetic that makes the band sound, at times, ever so slightly like Grandaddy (albeit Grandaddy on speed).

Songs range from lo-fi-electro-intellipunk jigs, through jerky, arpeggiator-laced takes on Roger & Hammerstein, to dark, retro delayed-synth interludes, like instrumental music to a lo-fi indie science fiction movie. Lyrics are often abstract, literary and somewhat opaque. But, when they need to be, they are clear, powerful - and brilliant.

Listening to Random Spirit Lover, it is sometimes easy to forget that these are songs - so well-considered and cleverly paced is the album. Tracks merge into one-another so that, often, inter-song transitions are barely noticeable - despite drawing on such disparate influences and sources, and vary so considerably in almost any musical sense. Impressively, dramatic and attention-holding variations in tempo, rhythm, key and arrangement are nevertheless bound seamlessly into a balanced, unified whole.

Seldom, I think, have I come across an album that successfully - entirely convincingly - covers so much musical ground, yet loses none of its focus and integrity. Excellent, and - I predict - enduringly interesting and rewarding.

[Read my full review at http://mog.com/cogwheeldogs]

Ah, Spencer Krug, where to begin? These albums (incl. Dragonslayer) have easily joined my all-time favorites, and very near the top, too. Spencer's construction of these songs (are they songs?) lead me to believe that he's some sort of musical demi-god (though little-known). Perfect structures, akin to architectural masterpieces and great art, that evoke profound emotional responses in those who behold them. As I stated in my Dragonslayer review, the rising and falling crescendoes, echoing cadences, bold statements and subdued whispers, emphasized with only occasional guitars, just captivate me every time I hear them. This music defies description and I wholeheartedly agree with the reviewer who said there is a hole in your music collection without Krug's music. A vast, empty hole.

Spencer Krug is rapidly becoming a candidate for awesomest person of all time. Well not really, but you know what i mean. On Random Spirit Lover, he weaves glowing webs of silken music-thread, which, try as you might, will not allow your freedom. But in a good happy indie rock sort of way. One can make the argument that this is a concept album about a failing relationship between a musician named Sam and an actress named Maggie (see Mending of the Gown). I would have to agree, and as the album progresses we hear their sad story and ultimately see their relationship unravel. But you just have to listen and decide for yourself. I highly reccomend this album for any fan of music that's willing to wait for the hidden treasure to surface after a few listens. And there's a sequel! Sunset Rubdown's next album deals with a few of the same themes and lyrics. For example, "You Go On Ahead (Trumpet Trumpet II) is indeed connected to "Trumpet Trumpet Toot Toot," as "Idiot Heart" is connected with "The Men Are Called Horsemen There" from Shut Up I Am Dreaming. But I digress. Buy this album.

Great CD, I have been listening to it for weeks and am enjoying it even more than 'Shut Up I am Dreaming.'

If you liked Sunset Rubdown's previous album, then you should like this one. They have evolved some, but thankfully not enough to leave behind what was so great about the previous album. One of my favorites from Random Spirit Lover is "For the Pier (And Dead Shimmering)."

Like one of the previous reviewers, I think this band's lack of attention is criminal.

Pretty ingenious, ambitious epic pop from Wolf Parade frontman Spencer Krug. If you can get past (and I almost can't!) the seemingly ubiquitous yelpy boy vocals a la The Shins and so many others (to whom we probably owe our ultimate thanks to Modest Mouse?), this one really needs to be listened straight thru. "The Mending of the Gown" starts us off in the brittle keyboards and guitar, herky-jerky pop mode of early XTC, while "Magic vs. Midas" begins as a plaintive ballad only to turn half-way thru into some heavy stadium riffing. By "Up on Your Leopard," Krug's 1970s carnivalesque prog rock aspirations are in full view: I mean I'm more than half expecting Peter Gabriel to walk on stage in the Slipperman costume. "The Courtesan Has Sung" takes tiger mountain (by strategy) into a TV on the Radio stomp, while "For the Pier" has the carpetcrawlers heed their callers. "The Taming of the Hands" is the effective denoument -- only knock and know-all but the kids seem to like it.