The Dragonslayer Review

My god I miss the way you used to be...

So here's a photograph for you to hold,
It's my picture right before I got old...

Sunset Rubdown, "Apollo and the Buffalo and Anna Anna Anna Oh!"

Growing old is probably the overarching theme of the new Sunset Rubdown album, Dragonslayer, and as someone less than a week from his high school reunion, that sentiment hits me squarely in the heart, along with the rest of Spencer Krug's magical musicianship on this absolutely brilliant third album.  From the tender first chords of amazing opening track "Silver Moons" to the stunning 10-minute closer "Dragon's Lair," Spencer is at his lyrical and musical best and the band is as tight and wonderful as I've ever heard them.  There are a lot of repeating thematic elements throughout -- moons, confetti, dead leaves, time, dawns, and of course, the age/old thing that is predominant on many of the tracks, especially "Silver Moons", an early front-runner among at least five tracks for my favorite song on the album...

I believe in growing old with grace
I believe she only loved my face
And I think maybe these days are over over now

Gone are the days bonfires make me think of you
Looks like the prophecy came true.
You are a fallen tree, he is a fallen true.
How old are you?  No, how old are you?

"Silver Moons" blends into the early-released scorcher "Idiot Heart" which starts slow but explodes around the 3-minute mark and puts to shame any previously released versions of the song.  It sounds much like it does live -- and it sounds great live -- and I believe Spencer has consciously tried to make a lot of these songs sound as live as possible.  Which helps make the album so perfect.  I dare anyone that hears Spencer roar "So look at you go!" at the 3:07 mark to not want to stand up and dance to elevated speakers and dream of seeing the band performing around you.  It's that great.

"Apollo and the Buffalo and Anna Anna Anna Oh!" is another almost perfect song -- there's only 8 tracks on the album, and I'd call at least 5 of them almost perfect, so that's kind of saying something.  It's probably the catchiest song, with hooks galore, and divided into two amazing parts... the first, almost four minutes of pure pop genius which I'd call "Apollo and the Buffalo", and the second -- the sing-along "Anna Anna Anna Oh! Why'd you change your name?" which is just the absolute perfect capstone to a wonderful track.  The first three tracks on this album are truly special.

So here's a photograph for you to hold,
It's my picture right before I got old...

It's a picture of a buffalo that we rode into extinction,

That was the crime you committed in the night

That was the crime you committed in the night...

"Black Swan" is the fourth track on the album and the only one I don't really love.   I remember they opened their concert with this song in the fall and I didn't love it then and I don't especially love this version here.  I don't know if it's necessarily a bad track, but I just don't think it fits into the album that well.  I know I'm in the minority here, but I've skipped the song on about half of the 25+ plays I've played of the album, and Dragonslayer sounds better without it.

"Paper Lace" is the fifth track and I know I'm in the minority again, but I really love this "cover" of Swan Lake's version, also written and performed by Spencer.  I don't know that it's better or worse than the Enemy Mine performance -- it's different, very different surprisingly, and very, very good.  Admittedly, this and "Black Swan" do form the weakest portion of the album, but that's only in comparison to the near-perfect opening three and the absolutely perfect closing three.  On any other album by any other band, these would be absolutely wonderful songs.

I heard your suffering
Come be a wild thing
Come run with Jackie, me, and this lady
This stupid house you made
Fell away like paper lace
Come run with Jackie, me, and this lady

"You Go On Ahead (Trumpet Trumpet II)" was originally written well over a year ago as a companion piece to "Trumpet Trumpet Toot! Toot!" from Random Spirit Lover, and every Spencer fan has heard and owned the Black Cab session version released about a year ago.  This version absolutely blows that away.  This sounds closest to the live version and this is a scorching song live.  Because this wasn't one of the "new" tracks on the album, I think I gave it short shrift in my initial evaluation, but this song blows me away every time I hear it now.  Especially the second half -- which is a full-out raging explosion of guitars and keyboards and Spencer's beautiful voice:

He would like to come home naked, without war paint on his face,
And appear before you virgin white, if virgins are still chaste!

So when you've got to wait, and you've got to wait, and you've got to wait, and you've got to wait, and you've got to wait for me,

And I'll appear before you virgin white, if virgins are still chaste,
Then I'd like to just... follow you a while.

"Nightingale / December Song" is the only unheard track on the entire album -- one that the band hadn't played live before -- and as such, it's pretty much everyone's favorite on the boards.  It starts out with a weird cowboy twang for the first minute but that's just the prelude for what is a truly special song:

So let me hammer this point home,
I see us all as lonely fires that have burned alive
As long as we remember
But like all fires and all sunsets,
We all burn in different ways,
You are a vast explosion and I am the embers...

That's one of the best lines I've ever heard: "You are a vast explosion and I am the embers."  Wow.  That's poetry right there, much like on the entire album.   The thematic elements on this album definitely hearken back to previous work by Spencer, on previous albums and for different bands, and are helping to create a genre of "Spencer songs" that are really unmatched by any current artist, and perhaps by any artist ever.  I've listed here many times the length and breadth of Spencer's musical compositions in just the last five years and this album definitely stands on its own without those references, but what we are witnessing is some truly staggering work of a musical genius.

2005  Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary (songwriter, lead singer on half the songs)
2006  Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up I Am Dreaming (songwriter, lead singer on all the songs)
2006  Swan Lake - Beast Moans (songwriter, lead singer on 1/3 of the songs)
2007  Sunset Rubdown - Random Spirit Lover (songwriter, lead singer on all the songs)
2008  Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer (songwriter, lead singer on half the songs)
2009  Swan Lake - Enemy Mine (songwriter, lead singer on 1/3 of the songs)
2009  Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer (songwriter, lead singer on all the songs)

That's seven albums in less than five years in which Spencer was one of the main songwriters.  And that's two #1 and two #2 albums out of the first five releases and the #1 and #2 album in 2009 so far, without doubt.  Not too long ago, I listed my favorite artists of all-time and Sunset Rubdown, through only two albums, had already reached the top 10.  If I redid that list today, they'd be easily in the top 5, probably around #4.  The Smiths have been my favorite artist for two decades running now, and despite the rise in my fandom of Pavement and Superchunk and others in the '90s and Modest Mouse and Bright Eyes and others in the '00s, no band has come close to dethroning them.  Sunset Rubdown is about to make a challenge.  Spencer is that good.

So back to the album, which closes with the 10+ minute epic "Dragon's Lair."  Everything that's good about this album is good about this track which starts out great, builds to a wonderful middle part with the repeated "Dead Leaves" line (emphasizing the album's theme of growing old).  But the shocking part of the song, especially as the album's closer, is the buildup to a hopeful, playful, unexpected and truly beautiful ending...

Dead leaves seen from the back of a train
I rode away from your station
They drifted in the air
Like memoirs of old conversations,
Sprung from a leather case
You opened in the wind
To watch the papers chase each other
Into oblivion...

You're such a champion.
You're such a champion.
I hide behind your sun
You are the champion.

You're such a champion.
You're such a champion.
I hide behind your sun!
You are the champion!

You're such a champion.
You're such a champion.
I hide behind your sun!
You are the champion!

Then he ends it all with "It's time for a bigger kind of kill" repeated over and over again... shades that he has even greater plans for his future?  World domination through music?  Anything's possible at this point.  This and Random Spirit Lover are the best two albums released by any artist over the past three years. 

• Download Sunset Rubdown - "Idiot Heart".mp3
• Pre-order Dragonslayer (and get the mp3s now!)
  

Comments

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Excellent review Bill. Pretty much agree with everything you wrote, except that
I like Black Swan a little more then you do. I still think I need a hundred
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