Dragonslayer
- Sunset Rubdown
- Jagjaguwar
So many of these new tunes from Montreal's Sunset Rubdown have the structure and feeling of mythic folksongs that it would be interesting to hear them all played just with acoustic guitar. On Dragonslayer, they're blown up into great shambling epics that gain momentum with each additional layer of reverberant guitars, bone-dry drums or retro keyboards. Spencer Krug's yelping vocal style is the sound of someone trying to scale the wall of his own limitations, which is a virtue when your goal is to wrangle an epiphany before you reach the double bar. Sunset Rubdown's passionate dice games with the infinite are mostly worth playing (though Idiot Heart seems bent on repeating itself into transcendence) and can lead to some intriguing affinities. In Silver Moons, when Krug sings "maybe these days are over, over now" to a stern and dignified roll of drums, in Silver Moons, the ghost of Stan Rogers draws surprisingly near.
Sunset Rubdown's seven-city Canadian tour includes shows at Richard's on Richard in Vancouver tonight on June 30, Calgary's Marquee room on July 2, the Pawn Shop in Edmonton on July 3 and Louis' Pub in Saskatoon on July 4. Complete tour info at sunsetrubdown.net.