Album of the Week: Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer

Call it art rock or experimental pop, but Dragonslayer certainly has weirdness to it. Sunset Rubdown have created an album that tenses and flexes as if about to strike, yet then recedes into placidity. This may seem like an odd description, but a listen to the album relays a series of these push and pull moments in which the bombastic melts into the calm, where anxiety churns into puppy-eyed affection. All of this can be heard in the album’s opener, “Silver Moons”, in which a baroque pop orchestration builds upon itself, ending up as a glam-rock anthem. The rest of the album plays a similar game and push-and-pull, though jumping amongst jittery new wave (“Idiot Heart”), the indie-pop of fellow Montréal groups Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade (“Paper Lace”), and complex punk-prog arrangements (“Dragon’s Lair”). If one tried to pin a mood down on the whole affair, one could see the album as mournful. Though Sunset Rubdown main songwriter Spencer Kurg has never shied away from the themes of death and loss, these have never formulated their selves so principally in the group’s previous catalog. The lyrics read like suicide poetry as Kurg belts out about empty rooms, departed(deceased?) lovers, and confetti floating away “like dead leaves”. Thankfully the album does not lose itself to any maudlin tendencies, and the record’s heavy subject matter is counter-balanced by buoyant choruses and Kurg’s bombastic vocals, which sound eerily more like Bowie than ever before. Much like Bowie’s Berlin trilogy of albums, the Arcade Fire, or the recent Dirty Projectors, Dragonslayer revels in the oppressive and darker aspects of life in such a celebratory fashion its as if Kurg and co. recorded the sounds of fending off the demons of human doubt and desperation. Always walking a fine line between indulgence and opacity, Sunset Rubdown have got the balance completely right, and in the process have created their first real masterpiece.

Listen To: Paper Lace, Idiot Heart, Silver Moons

RIYL: David Bowie, Wolf Parade, the Dirty Projectors