Sunset Rubdown and the Official Worst Opener Contest

By the nature of going to indie shows, one hears a lot of mediocre or outright crappy opening bands. I love openers, and have seen many good ones, including Final Fantasy, see the Take Away Show here, also saw Mobius Band as an opener.
That brings us to the Brooklyn Masonic Temple on thursday evening. I went with a couple of friends to check out Spencer Krug and one of his crews, Sunset Rubdown. (I'm not giving them a link, because the other person who reads this blog besides myself knows who they are). We missed the first group, but got there in time to hear a good portion of the second opener, Blood on the Wall. Listen to their Myspace, and then completely ignore what you heard, because it doesn't represent the band we saw. The band we saw featured low, screechy female vocals (i know, low AND screechy, crazy!). It also featured high screechy male vocals. You remember how I feel about screechy, see my Fuck Buttons post. Anyways, they were the embodiment of terrible rock music. As all 3 of my friends independently pointed out, they were like a horrible, horrible pixies cover band. Only with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah style vocals. And less skill. And more noise. I am not sure how much more I can elaborate on the fact that I just really, thought they suuuuuuuuuucked. It wasn't painful in the same way that Phil and The Ossophers was, but still it was miserable. How did they end up opening? It was Boost Mobile event, so I'm blaming them. I am going to start documenting all the terrible openers, and then proclaim the worst at the end of this year, called "The Official Worst Opener Contest". There will be some sort of prize....

So Sunset Rubdown played an awesome set, combining things from their two most recent albums, although I'm not sure if there was anything from the EP. They played a bunch of the Daytrotter session, and it just felt like Spence was really into it. Its interesting, because Random Spirit Lover songs blend together, so we were wondering how that would play out live. It ended up being really cool, because as they segued from one song to the next and it wasn't the song I was expecting, which i really liked. They joked about long spaces in between songs, but it never bothered me. There was a sense of suspense, and a little bit of trickery. Spence is definitely tricky. The more I listen to his work, the stronger his themes become, always horses, whores, nighttime (or time in general) or maybe its light? Childhood...fear. Anyways, feel free to comment (lol, people reading the blog) on this idea of his themes, he did say in his pitchfork interview about SR that all of his songs have meaning.

So once again, they were amazing, and we had a nice chat with Camilla and also with David Horvtz about the Polaroid Project. Also made a new friend, and I got his number for us, so yay networking! A good time was had by all, presumably.