I don’t really like Sunset Rubdown. I figure I should just be straight forward. I was going to open with this elaborate imagining of a dial—like a volume dial—split in half, one side labeled “Annoying” and the other “Acceptable”. Annoying is a gradient, there’s various levels, but Acceptable is totally uniform green, there’s no levels there. Sunset Rubdown records always start, for me, with the arrow just barely on the Acceptable side, and then by track three or four it’s a notch or two over on the Annoying side and by the end of the record I’m no longer paying attention or I’ve turned it off.

I’ve tried really hard for about two years now to like Sunset Rubdown but aside from The Mending of the Gown (which is like the best song ever even though it is kind of annoying too) and the first two tracks off Dragonslayer (of which the second song is two minutes too long and thusly annoying for it) I can’t say that I’m having any success.

Why do I have a hard time? I find Spencer Krug’s voice to be mesmerizing in that it seems almost inhuman (and, oddly enough, it sounds a lot better live than on record and I was really impressed by his vocals in a live setting) but then he’s always got to take it and shake it around until it sounds like cats are dying hidden away in his syllables. On top of that Sunset Rubdown songs tend to run a little long, and for no purpose other than to constantly repeat sections until you’re sick of them, which wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that the sections repeated aren’t memorable or enjoyable to sing along with in the least. They also play with discordance a little bit, in that every song feels a little like it’s slightly off it’s foundation (this might be just the mood I get from the music, filtered through my warped psyche) and we all might die at any moment.

So… Why did I even go to a Sunset Rubdown show?

I was really hoping seeing Sunset Rubdown live would make me go, “Oh! I get it now! They’re so great!” I’ve seen bands live that sounded like shit on the record, and I’ve heard material that felt wanting on record sound fucking amazing live, so I had hope that a Sunset Rubdown show would wow me so much that I’d have no choice but to run home and worship their entire catalog and start off a love affair equivalent to the one I had with Smashing Pumpkins in my Freshman year of high school (I walked around listening to Cupid De Locke for hours, oblivious to the world—I was such a fag).

But… no.

Sunset Rubdown in concert is pretty much exactly the same as Sunset Rubdown on record except that it’s a lot louder and all the instruments aren’t so easy to discern individually, and Spencer Krug’s vocal is frickin’ excellent and merely mesmerizing, not at all annoying—so if you like Sunset Rubdown you will probably love them in concert. Consider this my redundant recommendation: Sunset Rubdown fans should go see them live. (Non-fans should go see them live just to go see them live, satisfaction not guranteed.)

I mostly just enjoyed that they had a percussionist and a drummer, something that doesn’t come across on the albums at all (I’m pretty sure my nose was vibrating, it was weird), and that Camilla Wynne Ingr looked like a librarian who wandered bewilderedly onto the stage. Oh! And Spencer Krug looks pretty much exactly like the kid from The Girl Next Door.