Sunset Rubdown Was Robbed!

I've been meaning to complain about this for a while - at least since the Polaris nominees were announced - but I was so thrilled about the surprise placing of Malajube in the top ten that I thought it might seem a little killjoy. But why in heaven's name wasn't Sunset Rubdown's new record on the list? It can't have been only because it came out on tiny indie Global Symphonic; that label did, after all, unleash The Organ upon the world, and Malajube was issued by the also-teeny Dare To Care. And if Wolf Parade’s year was so wildly successful, wouldn’t most critics have followed the Krugery to Sunset Rubdown? Shut Up I Am Dreaming was also huge on campus radio, which had a respectable presence on the jury, so I can only assume Sunset Rubdown’s absence was due in part to a combination of provincialism and crankiness amongst the campus set.

It took me a while to come 'round to Wolf Parade's Apologies To The Queen Mary, mostly because 1. due to intimate acquaintances' journalistic pursuits, I heard the record incessantly for a week 2. when I saw the band in Brooklyn during CMJ they were atrocious 3. I couldn't get past Dan wearing a shirt that said Battered Wives (yeah, I know, Guelph band; doesn't make it right). Eventually I learned to love Apologies; but when Shut Up I Am Dreaming came out, I flipped out. Every time I put it on I was reminded that it was rather more work for the reward than the Wolf Parade record; but the payoff by the concluding sort-of title track was ever so much sweeter.

(Given the almost unanimous interweb gush over Rubies, I did also wonder about the absence of the Destroyer record, even though I personally didn't have much use for it. I'm not enough of a hater to feel schadenfreude over the omission - I respect my peers' unanimity even though I think they're wrong - but I don't doubt the theory that the New Pornographers' nod on the ballot was a more conventionally-minded vote for Bejar.)

So I suppose it's all very neat and circular that Krug and Bejar and other lovely wonky wanker, Carey Mercer (who I adore, by the way), are collaborating as Swan Lake. This is from the forthcoming record, Beast Moans on Jagjaguwar, due out in November. After a few listens I'm not convinced about this track - I love Frog Eyes & Sunset Rubdown & even early, awkward Destroyer too much, and this seems to indulge all their worst excesses. But I’ve been wrong before.

[MP3] Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up I Am Dreaming Of Places Where Lovers Have Wings
[MP3] Swan Lake - All Fires