Sunset Rubdown isn’t short on ambition. It takes about two minutes to start launches into Big Themes (“I’m sorry everybody dies”). First track “stadiums and shrines” then charges into a kind of fairground waltz 
before switching to second track “they took a vote and said no”s stop-start march rhythms. So far, so typical of that strand of densely orchestrated, spiky dream-pop that takes Neutral Milk Hotel as its lodestone. Essentially, this is one man, his mates and a highly overworked home-recording set-up (or a careful facsimile thereof). The man in question is Spencer Krug of the Wolf Parade; the album is, if not great, fascinating, with genuinely compelling moments.
‘Us Ones Inbetween’ is a slow piano-led song. Kind of a closing time sort of number of regret and remembered lust. “You are a wrecking ball”, the singer ruminates, before a xylophone playing a typewriter rhythm leads into the more layered ‘I am sorry I sang on your hands…’ (this is a school of composition in love with very long song titles). More spooky fairground ambience, drum loops and cardboard box drums. I’m starting to think of Destroyer here, with more gothic lyrics – “I really want to swim with you/I really want to swim with you/in the water that claims you.” More keyboard overdubs than I can count and lovely key changes.
‘Snakes got a Leg’ is more uptempo, jaunty even but still fractured by shifts in dynamics. Track eight (‘Men are called horsemen there’) is longer and a little dull and ones attention starts to wonder. Suddenly eveything suddenly comes into focus – the chugging folk chord sequences, the outbursts of tricksy Kurt Weil style melodies and jagged rock guitar over steady acoustic strum and one-handed piano: Spencer’s obviously worn out a dozen copies of Bowie’s ‘Man Who Sold the World’.
The last song makes up for it. ‘Shut up I am dreaming’ starts off with a folky strum and ends in a plangent minor key closing jam of swirling music boxes, drum machines and chugging guitars, one of those cycling indie figures that linger like a long reverb.
Overall, this sort of record works best with a few rough edges nudging against the flow and it’s the edginess and homemade feel that gives the album its charm. A collection of kitchen (sink) epics then and all the better for it.
Sample mp3 at http://www.absolutelykosher.com/sunsetrubdown.htm
