Before he was everywhere, recording and touring with Wolf
Parade, Sunset Rubdown, Frog Eyes, and others, Spencer Krug worked at a
bakery and hated it. It was killing him. So he quit, with the plan to
instead focus on music full time.
“It sounds very grandiose,” Krug says, pausing to decide whether
what he just said was true. “It kind of was at the time. I’m just like,
‘No, I’m just not going to work at jobs I don’t enjoy.'”
Krug spent the next year and a half scraping by and doing odd jobs
for his landlord in exchange for rent. And while Wolf Parade made his
money problems disappear, Krug’s work ethic remained the same. Since
2005 he has been a part of six releases, including two full-lengths
from his solo project, Sunset Rubdown. The first, Shut Up I Am
Dreaming, flashed moments of brilliance, highlighted by the bright,
wailing opener “Stadiums and Shrines II,” but the album as a whole was
a bit uneven. Some tracks were just too sleepy, obtuse, or agonizingly
lo-fi. An unnervingly harsh critic of his own work, Krug shared these
same observations with me, and set out to right them on the recently
released Random Spirit Lover. And while Krug seemed unsure if he
had achieved his goals, in my opinion he has.
Random Spirit Lover is more upbeat, quirky, round, realized,
and rich. Moments of stomping rock segue smoothly toward heartbreak and
mystery. Krug expertly weaves scaling movements and seemingly opposing
keys together in a unique stream-of-consciousness way, which mirrors
his words and vocals. On the best tracks, like opener “The Mending of
the Gown,” Krug forgoes the repetitions of traditional lyrical
structure to arrange the song as one long verse—or, depending on
your perspective, like a number of tiny, catchy choruses.
Get it while it’s hot, because Krug doesn’t plan to maintain this
break-neck pace forever. “Not necessarily less projects, but less
output,” he explained. “I just want to be able to take time with things
and make sure I’m not cranking out shit.”