Sunset Rubdown - 'Idiot Heart'
When Wolf Parade first broke back in 2005 with
Apologies to the Queen Mary, Spencer Krug seemed to be the frontman - in lieu of co-singer Dan Boeckner - that the accolades stuck to. Krug's yelpy mythmaking and complex arrangements hinted at something DEEP going on, something that Dan's songs - gritty, anthemic and urban - were deemed by the first flush of fans to not quite match the high falutin-isms of Krug. That Krug's 'I'll Believe in Anything' was the centre of both the Wolf Parade record and - apparently - their live show, only added to such a thought.
Post WP breakthrough, the release of each songwriter's solo album - Krug with Sunset Rubdown's
Snakes Got A Leg and Boeckner with Handsome Furs'
Plague Park - seemed to further the messageboard flaming.
Snakes Got A Leg was received as if gushed forth from some idiot savant, while the more detached and clinical
Plague Park had it's fans, but was generally assumed to be "not as good".
This view has shifted for mine in recent times. The recent Handsome Furs record
Face Control is fantastic, the confident and ragged sound of a band coming into their own. While 'Idiot Heart' is just the first song from Sunset Rubdown's upcoming
Dragonslayer I can't say it does much for me. Krug has gone on record saying that he wanted the band to sound live for this album and it does. It also sounds weak and loose, but worse, like the band's rehashing old ideas. The capitulation to "sounding live" means, for one, the departure from the processed double-tracked voice that Krug has made his key sound, and two, it means that the the band have wrested some creative control in the new "band" democracy.
And boo to that.
Dragonslayer is out June 20.