Best of 2009 Pt. IV: Dragonslayer by Sunset Rubdown

Spencer Krug seems to like saving the punchline for the end. There's a part of almost every song on Dragonslayer, usually between 1 and 2 minutes before the end, where something new is revealed. In the first few songs, to get the listener to notice what's going on, the music actually stops for a second - this is where most songwriters would end. Instead, the song continues with new lyrics, sometimes a new melody, and always a slightly different take on things. It's sort of like a bridge, but it's a bridge to nowhere - we never get back to the chorus or verse. (The one seeming exception to this rule, "Nightingale/December Song" still changes the lyrics of its refrain at the end.) This, along with Krug's usual lyrical tendencies (he seems to be having a conversation with someone he knows and you don't) helps explain the beguiling difficulty of this album. These songs demand your attention, yet expecting them to make sense is probably asking too much.

The whole album seems to have an elegiac feel, as if Krug is saying goodbye to something, although it's not exactly clear what that something is. "I think maybe these days are over," he sings on the opener, "Silver Moons." If I can indulge myself in a little armchair analysis, I'll take a guess that the complexity of Krug's songs has something to do with a fear of making music that is "merely" pop. And yet his lyrics seem to me also to reveal a fear of being so obscure as to be regarded as irrelevant. In other words, I think he's grappling with a need to feel like what he's doing is very important. I think this explains not only the complexity but also the grandiosity of many of his songs: the allusions to Classical figures and themes, the march-like choruses where he sings a line and his bandmates have to repeat it. I'm not saying this to criticize him - all his tricks work, pretty much. But the last song on the album, "Dragon's Lair," seems to indicate a longing to break out of the indie world and into something bigger, longer-lasting and more meaningful: "So you can take me to the dragon’s lair/or you can take me to Rapunzel’s windowsill./Either way it is time for a bigger kind of kill." Your guess is as good as mine as to what those two alternatives represent, but like the song says, either way it must be "bigger".