Sunset Rubdown - Random Spirit Lover

Random Spirit Lover is Sunset Rubdown's 3rd full length record album and their first to sound like a full set coaction rather than a Herbert Spencer Krug solo project. This is immediately apparent in the drawn-out presentation of record album opener "The Mending of the Gown," where each set member stretches out their musical legs in readying for the ensuing nearly hour-long journey into a human race of Equus caballuses and prostitutes before Krug interruptions through with his best 50's nickelodeon strut that would do Misfits-era Danzig outcry crying of blood. And THANK HEAVENS, for Sunset Rubdown is finally out of Herbert Spencer Krug's sleeping room and into the stars!

There's no better manner to open up an record album than with a quintessential mental representation of a new muscular sound of four instrumentalists feeding off each other and hitting all at once. And "The Mending of the Gown" delivers. The tunes are looser and the guitars more playful than anything we've heard from Sunset Rubdown. Keyboardist and background singer Camilla Wynn Ingr plays the Dan Boeckner function of pushing and pulling against Krug's vocals, bringing the song to high that Krug's voice simply could not attain on his own. Their exchanges of "this one's for Maggie, this one's for Sam" make a superb latent hostility that's both beautiful and manner too empyreal to not listen on repeat. It's the high-grade minute of 2007...that is, until 10 secs later when the gorgeously terrific "I have got lusted after you....THE manner blood chumps DO!" detonates and goosebumps it's way into the sing-along hallway of fame.

The glare doesn't halt there. In "Magic Vs. Midas," Jonny Greenwood-esque guitar jabbings permeate an otherwise lovely keyboard drive across the existence before Krug's mesmeric mantra "You made up a listing of your luckiest stars, and you made me familiar to you in the dark." It's moments like this that separate his songwriting from coevals like Frog Eyes' Carey Mercer. Though rather vague, abstract, and self-referential (the Equus caballuses have got galloped over from 2006's Close Up I Am Dreaming) like Swan Lake set first mate Dan Bejar, Krug's words always packs a tangible emotional resonance. Some of his high-grade minutes are the most subtle; the one's that uncover their wonderment and grief lone after perennial listens, as in "Winged/Wicked Things" when he sings "and the form of flight is helter-skelter and blind,
but it's compensate because pandemonium is yours and it's mine." It's the sort of beauty that tin lucifer such as Krug penned classics as "I'll Believe in Anything" and "All Fires."

The only unfavorable judgment I could come up up with is that the Cocteau-Twins-playing-D&D vibe of "Colt Stands Up, Grows Horns" is a spot of a impulse slayer smack dab in the center of the album. Also, closer "Child-Heart Losers" blanches in comparing to the former album's annihilating closer of "Shut Up I Am Dreaming of Places Where Lovers Have Wings." But that is indeed a mighty melody to match.

Random Spirit Lover is yet another notch on the belt of Herbert Spencer Krug, who have been cranking out quality record albums at a 60's hit-makers pace. This is that yearly fall release that bends everything a different colour and never go forths your cadmium player/turntable/ipod/whatever. Get into this now before you're complaining four old age down the line that he is past his prime.

Digital Music Format Opens Doors for Indie Bands and Unsigned Artists

The digital revolution is washing away the distinction between mainstream music and indie bands. Sure, we will always have mega-artists the likes of Madonna and The Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney, but now we are seeing the rising of the indie class. In part, record labels are embracing the indie class, particularly labels that are one or two degrees of separation from the major labels. But the real surge carrying the indie class towards the mainstream is the spawn of digital music.

Indie bands are gaining wide exposure to new listeners by focusing their efforts on digital music. Spreading the word is as simple as converting your music to mp3 and letting fans share and share alike. Create a MySpace page and they will come. Indie bands are profiling themselves on MySpace and YouTube, cheaply, and even mega-artists are eyeing the bandwagon and jumping on for the ride.

The internet long ago birthed a dedicated creative space for every artist, but cheap and plentiful domains now mean everyone gets their own website and a band would be crazy not to put something out there in webspace. But it was when streaming previews gave way to downloadable full-length tracks that the shift was marked. For most indie artists, the CD itself was never a significant source of income, so giving away the music for free doesn't skew the equation of financial success far from what it used to be. In fact, digital sales still do not make up 25% of the industry's revenue, so in every sense, an independent artist has little to lose by offering at least some of their music for free.

But the underclass, the unsigned artists, are benefiting from the popular appeal of digital music as well. Companies are reaching out to help them. One such company, DiscRevolt, manufactures prepaid download cards for bands to distribute or sell to their fans. The cards' artwork is customized by each band and loaded with 15 credits that can be redeemed on DiscRevolt's website. The band then posts live and studio mp3 tracks to their profile page on www.discrevolt.com/ and fans can then "purchase" the tracks using the credits.

A band buys the cards in bulk for as little as $.25 per card, and if they choose to sell them to fans, they keep any profit. The only charge to the band is the cost of manufacturing the cards.

This system, and there are a number of companies offering some variation on it, allows bands to cheaply distribute their music and possibly profit from studio recordings without the support of a record label. The sheer prevalence of cost effective promotional opportunities for unsigned bands has elevated them to instant indie status, and the indie bands are inching their way into the mainstream as record labels embrace a new digital business model that indeed has room for indie music.

The development of the digital music industry has meant that bands are no longer stifled by lack of exposure, or limited in their options of distributing their music. Determined artists have relatively cheap outlets for self-promotion on the internet from message boards to touring blogs. More clearly now, the distinctions separating the indie class from mainstream music are fading, and the best music out there will get its chance to be heard by everyone, however we classify it.