Concert Review: Sunset Rubdown/Blood on the Wall/Ecstatic Sunshine @ Brooklyn Masonic Temple (3/27/08)

(NOTE: I made the above playlist at imeem.com, an awesome site for streaming music files. I recommend signing up for a free account there in order to listen to basically every song on the site in full-length version. In the meantime, here is a link to a full version of "Acid Fight", and here's the Myspace page for Ecstatic Sunshine)

My appreciation of Sunset Rubdown has been a long while in the birthing. Spencer Krug purveys a highly theatrical brand of densely-layered symphonic and yet clattering indie rock with his increasingly serious (haven't they put out two full-length albums since Wolf Parade put out their debut?) and noteworthy in its own right stand-alone side-project. His songwriting, especially on last year's Random Spirit Lover tends towards the labyrinthine, piling melodic line on top of melodic line, shifting from chord to chord in a restless way that doesn't seem to appeal immediately with conventional listening sensibilities... or at least with mine, anyway. I think in describing their music to friends, I've used something like "Baroque, proggy, garage rockin' oompah-clatter." (I should have added to the end of that phrase, "that tends towards moments of shimmering transcendence.") Anyway, I remember that upon my first listen to Shut Up I Am Dreaming, the band's 2006 debut LP, I felt shut out by the dense murkiness of the production and the songs themselves. I definitely would not describe that record as "sharp". Spencer's keyboard tones shimmer and bleed, leaking all over the rest of the composition, and the drummer hammers on the crash early and often. Plus, when I heard second track "They Took a Vote and Said No" I got turned off pretty quickly, thinking "wow, goofy, faux-precious toy marching-band stuff. Not for me."

I was however always impressed with Krug's lyrics and the way he throws this mess of highly-evocative dreamlike language together and delivers it all in a highly-affected impassioned voice. Perhaps that lyrical talent was what encouraged me to keep coming back to those difficult, vaseline-smeared songs for additional listens, until finally the unorthodox melodies began to make sense and I could submerge myself in the wall of instrumentation instead of running smack into it and bouncing off.

So at this point I definitely consider myself a Sunset Rubdown fan, if not a fanatic, per se, and it was with some eagerness that last night, my good friend Chen and I went out to see them perform as the headliners at a wonderfully budget-priced show (thank you Boost Mobile and New York Magazine for targeting this demographic!) in the heart of Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

The venue was, as expected, a Masonic Temple, and managed to convey a pleasantly appealing low-key community-center-converted-for-a-punk-rock-show vibe in spite of the banners of corporate products adorning the main hall, and despite the imposing and elaborate architectural touches (which actually provided an apropos framing for Sunset Rubdown's ornate compositions) that come with being, well, a Masonic Temple. Not long after arrival, first act of the night, Ecstatic Sunshine took the stage. The venue was still pleasingly sparsely-filled and Chen and I took up chairs at the rear of the venue to conserve our standing strength and lower-back muscle endurance for the later acts. As lead-off men, let's just say that Ecstatic Sunshine did not quite do a Rickey Henderson-like job of setting the table for the rest of the line-up. I had actually done some prep work before hand to acquaint myself a bit better with the opening bands, and had found a 2006 record of theirs composed of dual indie-rock guitar instrumentals, like the guitar tracks from a Bloc Party record played in isolation, except more busy and complex to make up for their starkness. I thought it would make for a good opening act; gimmicky and interesting and diverting enough, a musical appetizer before the main course.

Alas, they instead opted instead to assault the audience with chime-y guitar loops and fuzzed-out analog keyboard tones, and Chen and I, after zoning out for a bit and wasting some of our eardrum's membrane integrity, instead opted to sit on a nice bench in the hallway. Although I only heard about ten minutes of music or so, they nevertheless shook me of the opinion that they were not playing compositions but merely "jamming" in an unfortunately unentertaining way that involved a lot of knob-twiddling and little to no dynamics, melody or complexity. Sorry, guys, I couldn't dig it.

We went in some time after we heard the abrasive noise inside the main hall end, to take up decent positions for the band batting second, Blood on the Wall. I had heard good things about BotW for a while, that they effectively and energetically recreated the sloppy, pleasantly slack sounds of early/mid 90's Indie Rock, (back when that term evoked Archers of Loaf, Pavement, Sebadoh and their ilk, and not the gratifyingly confusing mish-mash of styles it does today).

They took stage, just guitar, bass and drums, a refreshingly sparse setup and a good contrast to the relative plethora of instruments and musicians I expected the headliners to roll out. Bass player Courtney Shanks spoke-sang in what Chen pointed out was a pleasingly low register, a female vocal approach pointedly contrasted by her brother, guitarist Brad Shanks, who had the kind of appealing high-pitched whine that evoked Black Francis more than anyone, but also gave me glimpses of Jack White. Drummer Zach Campbell maintained a competent, hard-hitting thump.

They jammed out their straightforward Indie Rockin' tunes, but for most of their set were more notable to me for their earnest energy and good-natured approach than any compositional achievement. With their last two songs, however, I caught a glimpse of something special, the sort of slapdash, spiky, catchiness that was as appealing last night as it must have been for Pixies fans back in the day. Second-to-last song "Mary Susan" was an exhilarating shout-along and a bona fide anthem, and set-closer "Acid Fight" was a build and release jam that ended with Brad writhing on the floor of the stage repeatedly shouting the ridiculously great chorus "THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR FACE!!!!". In these two songs, Brad's vocals were at their finest, reaching heights of catchy shout/screaming that suggested he'd cross-bred his Black Francis shriek with a healthy dose of the yelping of the Jesus Lizard's David Yow (Acid Fight reminded me of Jesus Lizard staple "Seasick" with its churning, repetition of a single riff buoyed by super-charismatic howl-vocals).


So, with at least their immediate predecessors having done a bang-up job opening for them, Sunset Rubdown finally took stage. Spencer was even more boyish looking than I anticipated, which, along with his omnipresent slight lisp, cast his musical work in a different light, as the product of a preternaturally talented mastermind (I discovered later that he turns 31 in less than two months; no Zach Condon is he). They opened with an decent version of Random Spirit Lover standout "Winged/Wicked Things", that didn't quite nail the full martial drama and energy of the album version, probably just from being the first song of the night played, with no prior momentum to aid it. Immediately afterwards, though, and as if acknowledging the likeness, they played another waltz-time song of similarly stately and epic form, Shut Up precursor to "Winged/Wicked Things", "Stadiums and Shrines II". Their performance of this song was spot-on and one of the highlights of the night, and in an inspired choice, tacked on the outro from "They Took a Vote and Said No" for good measure, a thrashy section that fit better at the end of "Stadiums" than it did in its original place.

The front-loading of the set continued with "Trumpet, Trumpet, Toot! Toot!", a swift, howling minor-key rocker from Spirit Lover. On the whole, though, they balanced their set well, interspersing a few new songs amongst fan favorites, and never letting the energy drag too much. I was happy to see them display a good grasp of the strengths and weaknesses of their own catalog (especially as they work in the live setting), shunting many of their more marginal album tracks in favor of the more upbeat/epic numbers. It was enough that they included the dirge-like six and a half minute plus behemoth "Stallion" at the center of their set; had they also included fellow slowpokes "The Men are Called Horsemen There" or "I'm Sorry I Sang on Your Hands...", the energy of the set would have been totally quashed.

I was also disappointed by the truncated version of standout track "Shut Up I Am Dreaming of Places Where Lovers Have Wings", they played, cutting out the lovely, drama-building acoustic intro AND the awesome, psuedo-calypso new-wave-y outro that was one of the finest (and surprisingly in contrast with the rest of the album, very crisply-executed) moments on that album; it was a passage I had been looking forward to seeing live, but alas was not to be.

Krug and co. closed out the main part of their set with a surprisingly moderately-paced version of "Mending of the Gown" whose distinctive opening guitar flickers elicited a big cheer from the crowd, confirming which fan favorite was fairest of them all. I was not digging the relaxed tempo so much, but they did add some dramatic start-stop pauses and loud-soft dynamics that made up for the loss of faster album version's sheer giddy rush.

The obligatory encore brought out big, surprisingly conventionally structured (relatively speaking that is, for Krug) ballad "Us Ones In Between", the most effective slow song of the night. It was followed by unreleased song "Three Colours", a song that opened with a pleasantly breezy yet melancholy descending guitar figure, and in general proceeded along less melodically wild lines than the typical Sunset Rubdown tune (CORRECTION: "Three Colours" is actually an old tune that appears on a 2005 EP; I thought it was a bit misanthropic/anti-climatic of Krug to close with a new/unreleased song. Thanks to Maria for the tip). It was a solid song, and Chen even commented that it was the most appealing tune of the night for him.

So with that the concert ended. Overall, it was a fine show. Sunset Rubdown acquitted themselves well, for the most part totally nailing Krug's byzantine arrangements (except for, notably, one point in "Up On Your Leopard...", the little guitar lick that comes in at 0:53 in album version, when the guitarist either played a reeeeallly discordant improvisation, or more likely, just completely botched it), and Spencer's voice was surprisingly forceful, limber and accurate; he replicated, in note-perfect fashion much of the hooting and barking I had taken to be spontaneous when I heard it on record. But if I could select one general gripe with their performance, Chen and I did think the show suffered from the band's general disconnect with the audience. They performed competently and often passionately, Spencer forcefully banging out chords with aplomb and percussionist at the rear of the stage battering away with wild abandon, but there was little in the way of between song dialog, and as far as I could tell Spencer sang almost every word with his eyes closed. For a band so invested in highly theatrical music, they could have benefited from a little more playing to the crowd, a bit more hamming it up or just some on-stage movement or action, in the vein of the raucous Funeral-era Arcade Fire live show. Then their live show might actually become a moving theatrical spectacle in its own right, instead of just appearing to soundtrack one.


Sunset Rubdown Setlist:

Wicked/Winged Things
Stadiums and Shrines II
Trumpet, Trumpet, Toot! Toot!
Silver Moons
Up On Your Leopard, Upon the End of Your Feral Days
Idiot Heart
Stallion
Shut Up I Am Dreaming of Places Where Lovers Have Wings
Taming of the Hands that Came Back to Life
(New Song)
Mending of the Gown

ENCORE
Us Ones In Between
Three Colours