Oh, Sunset Rubdown, how we missed thee! Spencer Krug’s other band (well, one of them), which might be his best band (fight me!), last released an album in 2009: the epic and brilliant Dragonslayer. The world was quite a different place back then. Can I get an amen? *Sound of crickets.* The band returned in 2023 with a reunion tour, and during those rehearsals they began toying with the idea of working on new music.
The first song that sparked their fourth and latest album, Always Happy to Explode, is also the first song on the project’s tracklist, and one that Krug brought to rehearsals. As band member Nicholas Merz explains, “We started sharing ideas from afar and quickly realized how skilled we are as musicians. This thing could walk. We were just taking this tune for a little stroll.” From there? Well, as the kids say, “It’s game time.” The band, which also includes Camilla Wynne Ingr and Jordan Robson-Cramer, hit the stu’ and began cooking up the sort of proggy, posty-rocky goodness only they can.
To celebrate a remarkable reunion, we asked the band to break down each song on the new album. Lucky for us, all four members offered their individual perspectives. Check it out below.
1. “Losing Light”
Nicholas: This was the first song introduced to the band as an experiment in writing together. Spencer brought this in before the reunion tours from ’23. We started sharing ideas from afar and quickly realized how skilled we are as musicians. This thing could walk. We were just taking this tune for a little stroll. So we got together and decided to devote all of our rehearsals for the entire two weeks that we set aside to work on the album to just practice this one song, because we knew we had something to prove.
The night we tracked it, Terry, who co-owns and runs the studio with Jordan, cooked us this incredible food and used these leaves that only grow on Gabriola Island for kindling in the outdoor cooking setup that she has. I believe she spent a lot of money on this setup to impress the neighbors, that sort of deal. And absent-minded as we were, we got so distracted by the aroma around the fire that we forgot to eat altogether and tracked this song in the first take. I’ll be humble and speak for us all: we couldn’t miss. Could not.
2. “All Alright”
Spencer: Every album I make has a song like this—one that refused to sit still for the group photo. And now it’s too late. I’ve heard it back probably five times since mastering, and every time it shouts the same three directives at me, clear as a drill sergeant: “Turn down the acoustic guitar! Turn up the noise guitar! Balance the vocals!” These moves seem overwhelmingly clear now. How did I not hear them before? Jace and I spent more time mixing this one than any of the others. The text threads of “+1db this” and “-.5db that” are comically (tragically?) long. And yet we kept going back. Masochists.
Now, the more important question is this: How to hear beyond regret? I want to let the harmonies between Camilla’s voice and my own—harmonies that I’d say are more nuanced than those of any other Sun Rub song to date—float into my skull unencumbered, like two airships through a hole in the clouds. I want to let the anxiety of Jordan’s noise guitar bubble and fester under the surface of this otherwise-traditional instrumentation, subverting the quaintness of it all, without wishing it was louder. He and Nicholas kept the drums and bass in lockstep, with the bass tastefully heavy, simple. (Knowing when not to flourish: one of Nicholas’ strengths.) I wish I could just groove to it all, let it wash over me without wishing my own inexplicably ’90s-style acoustic wasn’t so in my own face.
Was it over-thought in the mix? Or was this song just always a bad apple, never capable of being good—“poor kid never had a chance” kinda thing—and we did the best we could in what short time we had, like wholesome basketball coaches? Even now, trying to write about it, my words are forced and my metaphors are muddled. Love this song for me, people! Love it for me, for I cannot. She is covered in scars, and I am shallow, shallow, shallow as a powder box.
3. “Candles”
Camilla: I love this song. I think Spencer was kind of weirdly embarrassed he wrote such a great pop song, but it slaps. It’s irresistible. I used to dance around to the demo in the kitchen with my baby every morning before we met to record. I love the interplay of the synth and keyboard, plus the fact of the bass (it’s only our second record with a bass). Everyone trying to play laid back. It’s also the only song we doubled my vocals on, so I get that extra pop texture.
4. “Snowball”
Jordan: This song took an extraordinary amount of concentration for all of us to inhabit and sustain. When I listen back I can still picture the Beard Lichens and the sopping Pines of Gabriola Island, where we recorded. Sometimes when you’re recording live off-the-floor as we did here, it feels like any deviation of focus will throw the whole band and performance off track; getting this song down was definitely one of those recordings. I’m really proud of what we captured (so is Nicholas, as evidenced by the end of the tune). There’s a mournful and damp sleepiness to this song which feels very much like winter on Gulf Island and takes me right back to these sessions (I find this feeling quite often in Spencer’s pianowork). Deciduous West Coast melancholy (but with occasional hand-claps!).
5. “Ghoulish Hearts”
Nicholas: This was the last song that Spencer brought to us before we met in January to begin working in-person and tracking the album. I don’t think it’ll come as a surprise that we literally worked on this song for under five minutes before we were ready to record it. Spencer made us all take five, so we parted ways and by the time we came back he’d rewritten the song completely without us knowing. Jordan, the engineer, armed the tracks and before we knew it, the song was being tracked and learned simultaneously. After we finished, we all went silent. I can only assume that the silence was a shared shame from everyone. It’s difficult to imagine, but for the four of us, being this skilled comes at a price—emotionally that is. We decided not to celebrate, because these sort of events were just everyday occurrences for each of us.
6. “Reappearing Rat”
Camilla: This was chosen as our first single because it represented us as a new permutation of the band, working on what felt like a hard problem that ultimately resulted in a triumph. It was the first song we started tracking, and it was rough. So we came back to it on the last day, cut some fat, and felt like we nailed it. Sweet relief! I had such a hard time getting the rhythm for whatever reason. My favorite little bits are the blast beat at the beginning and holding that warbling note in the first verse. I don’t know what it’s about, but everyone else in the band seems to.
7. “Cliché Town”
Spencer: Weird vibes in the live room. I want to extend the outro, but the passive-aggressive energy between JRC and I has gotten so bad we’ve lost the ability to communicate clearly. Everyone seems confused by my idea. Recording live off the floor means we all have to be on the same page, but right now we’re not even on the same planet. I’ve got no faith in any of this. The song is spiraling away. Nicholas calls for an impromptu group therapy session in the lounge room. Jordan Koop, engineer extraordinaire, has seen this a hundred times. He knows he’s got a long lunch break ahead. What an unsurprisingly dysfunctional thing a band is—a marriage and a business partnership with three other creatives. Who’s fucking idea was this.
I get in trouble for turning away from JRC while he’s speaking to me. It’s true, I shouldn’t have done that. I meant no disrespect, just stood up to get a drink. I mean, my ears work in both directions, but yeah, OK, I shouldn’t have turned away. Body language and all that. I make it clear I’m uncomfortable with this mandated group talk. Nicholas leaves. JRC and Camilla then have some small altercation. Camilla leaves. Then JRC and I spend a while talking—about the past versus the present, about music, about what this band actually is, and about love. I’m better at this. One on one. And of course we sort it out. Talking isn’t so much difficult as it is annoying, at least for internal processors like myself. But I know the value. We can’t get anywhere without communication. In truth, I don’t think I’ve left many conflicts unresolved in life.
That night, or maybe the next morning, we get back in the live room and track the song and it’s fine. It’s more than fine—it’s great. We’re good at this. But somewhere in all that Camilla was crying in the vocal booth. Collectively we’re a sensitive beast.
8. “Worm”
Jordan: This song went through at least three permutations in arrangements and sonics. We were even about to lay down a Eno-Fripp like version. There was one version we recorded that sounded like NEU! jamming with a The Cars cover band (control-room playback of this take was a sobering experience). In the end, like a lot of songs on this album, we just made things spartan and straightforward, and it seemed to revive the song’s magic and emotion. The end drone thing is one of my favorite parts of the album—partially because when we play it live, I’ll get to sit back and let the rest of the band’s waves of tone wash over me for every show (the closest I’ll get to listening to the group like I’m an audience member). I plan on closing my eyes and doing a micro-hit of meditation.
9. “Fable Killer”
Spencer: Another day of unspoken tensions, here and there, weaving through the studio—long, invisible tentacles. Don’t get me wrong, there are joyous days in the studio—days of enthusiasm and camaraderie and actual happiness—but today is not one of them. Today is one of those other kinds of days, wherein, despite ourselves, we cannot connect. And making art in a group can be exhausting when there’s no magic in the sails. Everyone’s arms get sore from rowing.
I can’t remember now if we tracked anything usable, can’t even remember what we were working on, but at the end of that day, unplanned, I tracked this song. The others were all doing other things: walking, cooking, I don’t know. I told Jordan I wanted to try a song on the piano. He armed the tracks.
I’d microdosed mushrooms earlier that day and found they were making me a little jumpy, so I tried balancing them out with scotch, but then felt a little too loose to play, so I vaped a little weed. Point is, my soul was showing a little bit when I sat down at the piano, and melancholy at the day’s vague failure was pawing at my heart. Maybe, then, some magic can come of this. Maybe I can just warm up for a few seconds, start the song without thinking too much, with nothing really at stake, and exorcize the day. Maybe, with song, I can reconstruct these bad vibes. And maybe in a few minutes Jordan will enter the live room with optimistic eyebrows and say, “One and done?” And listening back I’ll know he was right. That’s the take. That’s the song.
And later, JRC will want to put ethereal guitar under it all, barely a mist of sound, but still I’ll fight him on it. In the end he’ll do it anyway, and to this day I don’t know if that lovely, thoughtful guitar part makes the song better or worse. In all likelihood, it just makes the song different, so why not keep it. We’re a “band,” after all.
