Always Happy To Explode is a testament to the power of dreams. Fifteen years after they quietly broke up, Sunset Rubdown are back with a new album all because the band’s leader Spencer Krug had a dream that they had reunited. Tempting his dreams to become reality, he asked his bandmates if they would be interested in getting back together. A positive response all round, they went on a short tour (adding a new member, bassist Nicholas Merz, into the mix too) where they met their aim through and through: have fun.
This condition of their reunification met, they decided to book some studio time and put another album together. Marred by various issues along the way (including the scheduling conflicts of guitarist Michael Doerksen, who ultimately was missing from the album’s recording sessions), the band stood strong and were determined to make it work. Always Happy To Explode is the end result, an album that was recorded with as few overdubs as possible and one that sounds both like none other than the work of a Spencer Krug outfit and also not quite like any Sunset Rubdown album that has come before.
If one had to find a reference point, then Always Happy To Explode sits somewhere between the early Snake’s Got A Leg solo tinkering and the “live off the studio floor” feel that Dragonslayer captured. There’s a rawness here, an experimental lean; there’s no feverish theatricality like on Random Spirit Lover, but there’s still drama. There are references to previous tropes and songs (“Another song about a dream / Another song about a snake,” Krug whistles over inky synths on “Snowball”, while the enveloping “Worm” drops a mention of “little lord”),and it’s like Krug is ushering in the ghosts of the past to find a new home in 2024. Always Happy To Explode isn’t a triumphant return; it’s a warm reunion record, the sound of friends coming together again to try and capture some of that old magic.
And there still is magic to be made, even if it is a slightly different kind. Across its six minutes, “Cliché Town” captures a sort of Twin Peaks-esque mystery as piano notes twinkle over the throb of bass and woozy synths. “Nowhere to go but no reason to stay,” Krug laments with a sleepless melancholia. “Candles”, with its sprightly keys, syrupy bass, and jittery drums, doesn’t feel far off from being a recent Wolf Parade cut, but it adds pep to the tracklisting here as Krug reckons with pandemic life and imposter syndrome (“I’m the greatest when I’m basically just standing there / Lighting candles in a room already filled with light”). Aforementioned “Worm” draws all the band members in for vocal duties, creating layered harmonies over fuzzy, warped VHS-like synths that are left to wash over the listener in extended intro and outro sections.
It’s easy to bemoan Always Happy To Explode not sounding like you might initially expect or want it to, but getting caught up on this fact is to not be living in the present. Jordan Robson-Cramer’s busy drumwork on “Ghoulish Hearts” is a far cry from the caffeinated percussion on “The Taming of the Hands That Came Back to Life”, but the funereal-like march and rippling chimes are what’s needed here. The bleary synths and acoustic guitar on “Losing Light” might not be the barnstorming opening number you expected after a decade and a half away, but hearing Camilla Wynne and Krug harmonise again is honey to the ears, like hearing the theme tune from your favourite childhood TV show. (It feels poignant that the track is both self-referential to their recording ethos here – “Has there ever really been a masterpiece / Cut up on the cutting room floor?” – and plays like a soft rallying cry to battle on.)
To say that Always Happy To Explode won’t be anyone’s top Sunset Rubdown album isn’t meant as an affront, but merely as a comment on the infectious and titillating quality of their best records. Sure, not everything here feels essential: “All Alright” is a troubled song in even Krug’s own eyes (“Love it for me, for I cannot”) and that fidgety overworking shows; and “Reappearing Rat” is a solid take on that niggling ghost that hampers all good moments, and its insistent snare helps keep you fixed on it, but as a whole it’s a middling number. These are re-growing pains of sorts, if you had to call them anything. The required space needed for a reunited band to see what still fits, what they have outgrown, and what new items work. It’s 2024 and Sunset Rubdown are a different force than what they once were. Blunter maybe, if not softer. If we’re lucky we’ll get another Sunset Rubdown album somewhere in the future, but for now, living in a world where they are making music again is already something of a dream come true – a feeling, at least, that isn’t unfamiliar to Krug.
