Sunset Rubdown – Dragonslayer
Jagjaguwar
Reviewed by Chip Norman

If Bruce Springsteen is your Stones, and you believe Bono deserves to breathe, you weren’t meant for a musician.

Had this fact been imparted upon the sensitive souls who would become Sunset Rubdown, a band fronted by the singer from Wolf Parade, I might have been spared Dragonslayer. But given that history is unlikely to reverse itself just to prevent me from having heard a very bad record, I will be constructive and embrace Sunset Rubdown as a much needed call for “Indie” to drop the “Rock.”

And if, to this end, Dragonslayer were actually a ploy to bring about a moratorium on Canadian music-production, Sunset Rubdown might have a valid excuse. Unfortunately, these dorks seem not to be in on the joke. And with that naivete, the opportunity for claiming irony is lost to the criers. Sunset Rubdown actually seem sincere about being indie serious. And these jerks are regrettably not alone in this trend.

Recent years have been a real coming-out event for the Pitchfork League of 7.6-and-above Bed-wetters. Apparently, limp quirk and dull awfulness has lost all winning charm for the indie rocker. And Sunset Rubdown, no longer satisfied with earning a living by sucking gently, are gambling for that inner Springsteen. Dragonslayer is their Holocaust-bad application to be “The Boss.”

Crybabies in girl-pants better prepare to swoon. Each verse of this epic is a hyperbolic conniption of crescendo, with each successive climax increasing in bombast and ugly as the hyperventilating front-boy recites awful poetry in an obligatory vibrato sing-song. This deficit of singing ability is bolstered by a librarian’s Pro-Tools layered back-up vocals.

Instrumentation does not make a save. Dragonslayer is further proof that an indie guitarist with outward ambitions is unlikely to flatter the instrument. The Rubdown seem to have mimicked the Edge with reverence, employing non-abrasive distortion, economy flange pedals and conspicuous moments of noodling that fail to make the balls drop. It is questionable whether the band was even aware of a guitar player being in the recording booth. Beyond the poorly written parts, there is no competence for blending guitars with the indie-douche fetish for untold numbers of novelty, toy-instruments, all indiscernible from three similar sounding Moog keys. The misguided musicianship results in a cacophony of poorly-mixed gay.

These are not the limits of Sunset Rubdown’s offenses in this attempt at producing a “Sunday, Bloody, Sunday” of their own. Several songs are bridged with unconvincing drum-circle drone tangents riffing on a fictional fag-Zappa. These awful moments highlight how far Sunset Rubdown will go to make you believe that Canadians are people and that pussies can rock, too. The unforgivable “Black Swan,” a progressive rock jam, is so bad that it practically redeems The Mars Volta. “My Heart is a kingdom. Where the king is a heart.” is an actual and constantly refrained lyric. Such lyrics, according to internet nerds, offer examples of “brooding,” “wise,” and “unknowable” storytelling that demands audience “decoding.” Hm. Do the nerds have some sort of pussy decoder ring that we don’t? Seriously. If Dragonslayer is “baroque,” so is contracting AIDS at a Shim bar. (NOTE: “Pussies Can Rock, Too” should be printed on all Sunset Rubdown t-shirts and merchandising. Unfortunately, the band will likely opt instead to put the pussies in the shirts, and not on the shirts.)

Without question, Wolf Parade was just another “wolf” indie that made nothing so near as quality music, but at least they weren’t humiliatingly operatic. In fact, they were graciously boring. I suppose the only obvious course for these bores was to eventually amp up the obnoxious. But how much swelling climax and peaking braggadocio can be successfully inflicted on an album composed solely of cutesy clicks, beeps, and boops? The answer should be clear.

Like the Arcade Fire, Decemberists, and all of their other whimpering peers that vibrate-yodel, Sunset Rubdown is desperate to lift themselves from innocuous Indie trivia and up to dramatic heights of Bono-Springsteen arena gay. Whether these Canucks actually make it to pulling their vagina’s out before a world-wide, gender-bending stadium tour, I can’t say. I certainly hope not.

But for my part, Dragonslayer receives an ‘F’ for effort. Even the “Whoa-hoh’s” are melodramatic.

Popularity: 1%