Sunset Rubdown + Bear Hands - Middle East Downstairs (Cambridge, MA; Sept. 15, 2008)

Monday, Monday.

It’s hard to marshall enthusiasm for a concert on a Monday night. But reviewing press materials and pre-listening and reminding myself of Sunset Rubdown’s lineage [Wolf Parade, Swan Lake, etc.], I managed to get myself worked into the appropriate pre-show frenzy and made it to the Middle East Down. And all of the 18+ Allston/Central Sq. crowd and I were reasonably well rewarded for our effort.

Before Spencer Krug et al. took the stage, Brooklyn openers Bear Hands ambled through a quick set. While I was perfectly happy to listen in at first, I didn’t find anything particularly engaging in the sound of their opening offering. It was just some slow-evolving noodling, Espers-on-quaaludes, and I began to despair of my evening. Luckily, Bear Hands kicked it into higher gear on their next piece, requiring their skilled, muscle-teed guitarist to bang along on drums.

Bear Hands had many of the required features of a Brooklyn touring band, down to contrast-laced canvas shoes, natty boxer-briefs hanging out of the tops of low-slung, washed-out skinny jeans, as well as bonus exuberant bass-wielding and curiously coiffed heads. What placed them apart from the rest of the noise was their use of surprising tonalities, particularly later in the set.

The set would have been much better (and better received) had the band not dropped so much of their momentum between songs. After the initial two pieces, segueing directly from one song to the next became the exception rather than the rule, and the dead air was filled with aimless nattering probably picked up by watching other bands natter aimlessly, hopefully to greater effect. They’re certainly writing good songs and performing them engagingly; they just need to spend more time doing doing just that.

Sunset Rubdown’s Spencer Krug opened up the evening by telling us that we were the first stop on their tour, so we’d hear “a lot of new shit” that night before anyone else, making us special. As crowds do, we cheered for our specialness. But for the first time in many shows, I felt that the band made a real connection with the audience. All of the musicians could interact with the crowd, though none felt compelled to. Spencer would occasionally thank people for their patience (and would name songs with some variation of “Please Don’t Let Sarah Palin Be Elected For Anything Anywhere Ever"), and Camilla (on keys, vibes, and toys) would react to flirtation from the crowd with great indulgence and humor. And though you can’t hardly throw an indie-released EP without hitting a band that employs a melodica these days, Sunset Rubdown’s use of toys and electronics never came off as gimmicky. Truly, their performance was heartfelt.

The band showed sophisticated songwriting, particularly in their newer work (see FANSITE http://wolfparade.nonstuff.com/ for set list and discussion of new vs old stuff). We heard jarring chords, crunchy tonality, and compelling lyrics blended beautifully together. And they can certainly play “hurricane music,” where of a sudden the whole band is just wailing and whipped up and go-go-going.

The highlight for me was their last song before the encore, a new piece called “Dragon.” It was long minutes gone before I realized exactly how long the piece was, with a basic, declared tonal movement with occasional rhythmic variations layered on top. Eight-to-ten minutes in length, “Dragon” blisters toward the end, with a constantly moving and altering drum sound, slick bass and guitar lines, keyboard from all sides, and then just lots and lots of VOLUME. And Spencer has exactly the right kind of voice for such thick orchestration, able to strainedly float on top of the whole mess or cut directly through.

They’re touring all over the place. Catch’em before they head back North of the Border and we can’t afford the price of Molson.

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