Music of the Moment: Sunset Rubdown
I got around $60 in iTunes gift cards from friends this past Graduation Season. Today's shopping spree landed me Sunset Rubdown's "Shut Up I Am Dreaming."
Full review after the jump.
I was initially attracted to them because their "main dude," Spencer Krug, is also a member of Wolf Parade. Not only that, but their iTunes review said that Wolf Parade was 'more accessible' than Rubdown. That statement caught me, because if you know Wolf Parade, you'll probably agree with me when I say they aren't really an "accessible" band.
I'm listening to song 7 of 10 right now, and so far, in some ways I like it better than Wolf Parade, which is saying a lot. It's got the same kind of vocal style, though it's not the same lead singer, but most of the songs are stylistically different with the same sense of instrumentation and chord structure.
It's always been hard for me to decipher Wolf Parade's lyrics in most instances, and the same applies here, but the 50% of the lyrics that I do catch are original, lucid, and poetic. He doesn't fall into repetitive phrases, and the songs can barely even be said to have choruses, much like Modest Mouse's early days. Though there are a lot of lyrics, he manages to avoid predictability every time I try to predict him.
I'm up to the last song now. My overall impression is that this album is to Wolf Parade what Ugly Casanova was to Modest Mouse. It's definitely different, but in a very good way. I'll be putting this in heavy rotation.
Later edit: The only gripe I have about this album is that there are too many fades. You can't have everything, I guess.
I also got "Return to the Sea" by Islands, but I haven't had a chance to give it a full listen. More on that tomorrow, perhaps.
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