Sunset Rubdown: Random Spirit Lover

Mixing in even more elements than their first album, Sunset Rubdown continues to be an experiment in progress, always morphing and coming up with intricate sounds and progressions. For some reason, the stuff always makes me think about fairies. Not sure why, but there is magic in the music (without turning directly to Blues Traveler-like maypole dancing music). There is something vaguely tree sprite and pirate about the music. How those two things meld is beyond me, but it works. I actually use “Up On Your Leopard, Upon the End of Your Feral Days” to drive Ms. Hipster absolutely insane. She can’t take the pirate yo-ho-hos, chimes and accordion (?) that brings the pace and bombast of the song to the edge of hysteria, only to collapse and build and collapse and build again. It’s like Men Without Hats on crack, but I fuckin’ love it. “So way to go!” This one builds on their debut, adding in some female vocals, lots of weird Brit references (courtesan?) and lots of songs that change and morph before your very eyes. They feel less like songs than happenings or events, like one is seeing a play all in the span of an album. Sure the experimentation gets away from him every once in a while, but you can’t make a cake without cracking some eggs, right?