Dreamland EP: Marimba and Shit-Drums
[Jagjaguwar; 2010]
Links: Moonface | Jagjaguwar | Purchase on Insound
Posted by Chris Secrest on 08 January 2010
Help! Someone has coerced Spencer Krug, lead singer of Sunset Rubdown, into crooning for twenty minutes against a rash of marimba and repetitive drum. The dastardly devil’s name is Moonface, and he must not be allowed to tarnish such a unique legacy.
If anyone were prone to creative exhaustion, it would have to be Spencer Krug. This past year saw the release of two other records distinct from the ‘Moonface’ canon, Enemy Mine from Swan Lake and Dragonslayer from Sunset Rubdown. Disappointment with the former was quickly covered by exuberant appraisals of the latter, a work that kept the singer’s sense of theatricality but benefited from a marked absence of slick production techniques. This brazen move became a necessity to the beleaguered songwriter who recently grew critical of his previous output and looked to shed his own daunting persona. Krug’s genius, spread to six different acts, has been diluted through an overextension of the pathos. His latest work suffers from a similar fatigue, resulting in an uneven piece that relies heavily upon the whimsy of its creator’s fantastical lyricism.
The twenty-minute opus starts out innocently enough with a marimba signaling the listener’s journey down the rabbit hole into a soundscape filled with cryptic imagery. The marimba fails to excite over the elongated performance, betraying its beautiful sound by becoming an endless annoyance. Drums triumphantly enter to break up the monotony, but they too begin to grate on the listener, developing into interludes reminiscent of Dirk Diggler. Sonic effects pierce the split vocals at the three-minute mark, paving the way for a bit of tinny guitar that takes hold and fires up a delightful solo. Multi-tracked vocals provide a steady stream of distortion around the seven-minute mark, while the marimba is constantly pounded, sounding not unlike ping-pong balls bouncing around a glass house. This unsavory noise continues throughout the ballad with little variation. Some fiery percussion molds into a pleasant melody around the eight-minute mark, then evaporates.
It becomes clear relatively early on that the piece’s strongest moments appear when the two main instruments are relegated to the back of the mix, while Krug’s feverish yelps are brought to center stage. “I venture into a dreamland where the waves have come alive and I watch them chase the people down the beach. But they are bound to the water. Like creatures on a leash.” This fairy tale rendition of an everyday ocean shore is a fleeting symbol of what critics have come to admire about Krug, but even some slick guitar and spooky voice modulation much later on can’t hide a string of egregious wordplay in what is perhaps the worst chorus he has ever written: “I was lying around with chameleons. I was hanging around with bitches. I heard that there’s a war on and I’m sure that they’re not with us.” As Krug continues, “No no no no no…” you will agree and anxiously await the wrap-up. A bout of feedback rounds out the insufferable marathon, cleansing the mind of a twenty-minute period spent almost entirely in tedium.
With a handful of great albums under his belt in the aughts, Krug deserves a bit leeway to venture out on his own. Such a long dirge filled with unimaginative instrumentals and shapeless structure, not to mention some wretched phrasing, could possibly be misconstrued as pretension, but sounds more like an artist enjoying himself at long last. Dreamland EP: Marimba and Shit-Drums is admittedly an indulgent piece, merely a mode of experimentation for a weary musician in need of a quiet creative outlet.
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January 8th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
I must speak out. The problem is you've merely analysed Dreamland just for the music that most likely everyone passingly downloaded. If you go to his site (http://moonface.ca) you realise it's all part of a larger project that had haunted Krug for months, if not longer. On his site he has written up dreams he has had and when you read through them the whole thing make a great deal more sense. The phrasing in the music is fragmented and ambigious but that's what dreams are like most of the time.
Dreamland is a indulgent experiment by Krug but it's not so offputting despite it's limited palette suggested by the title Marimba and Shit-drums. But even though the marimba is a new instrument for Krug to dabble with, it hardly sounds shocking for his style. The twenty minute piece is still full of enchanting rhythms and melodies and even when the music slows to a near halt to reconfigure itself, it never really loses it's relevant pace. This is perhaps the most personal sounding work he has created since those hissing tape demos on Snake's Got A Leg. It's the sound of a man who's been trying to make sense of something most psychoanalysts would struggle with. It sounds like he's confined himself into a room for a week, tinkling away at the marimba and adding ineffects when desired. And it's sucessful in that respect but it will hardly draw in the Krug skeptics. Dreamland might well drive others away with it's length but if he broke this up into separate songs it would make less sense. The reason it's so long is because, as said, Krug is trying his best to find what these dreams all mean, putting them all in one place and working through them bit by bit. If you look at the lyrics on his site you'll also see that they are presented in individual paragraphs. There would be no point reading this as one long piece as it would imply he's figured something out when i can't say i'm convinced he has.
If you've ever had that scary feeling you're falling just as you fall alseep then you might begin to understand Dreamland, even if it is just a little. When we're sleeping we're still alive, our bodies functioning but our minds create worlds that we couldn't imagine conjuring up when we're awake. I've had some seriously freaky and beguiling dreams in my time so i can sympathize with Krug. I've always wondered what each dream meant and why some keep happening. Am i trying to tell myself something? I don't know but maybe if i looked into a bit more i might figure something out. And that's what Krug has done here and you can hardly blame a man for being curious.
January 9th, 2010 at 5:12 am
Listen to it while you are falling asleep. It's much better that way.