The Montreal four-piece Sunset Rubdown began as a solo project of Spencer Krug (Wolf Parade, Swan Lake), but eventually expanded to include Camilla Ingr, Jordan Cramer and Mike Doerkson for live performances. Blending infectious acoustic and electric guitar, glockenspiel, pulsating drums, accordion and a keyboard turned up loud enough to make an amp struggle with distortion, Sunset Rubdown’s latest record, Shut Up I Am Dreaming, delivers a full helping of intimately edgy art-rock. Despite the record’s success, something seems rushed about the band’s development: they only played three shows before heading off on their first tour, they don’t have an official web site, and their drummer only recently acquired his own set of drums.
In anticipation of Sunset Rubdown’s concert at D.C.’s Black Cat on Wednesday, Sept. 27th, The Voice caught up with the group’s accordionist and backup vocalist Camilla Ingr to discuss hype, baking, and ostrich feeding.
It seems that Sunset Rubdown has deliberately avoided being over-hyped. Lead singer Spencer Krug noted in an interview with Prefix magazine that he wanted to “avoid the fuss” and gain attention “for the work.” Do you feel that the public has set the bar too high too soon? Is there pressure performing in the live environment?
It’s kind of hard to tell when you’re being hyped, really. I have no [gauge] as to how many people have heard of us or anything. Definitely we have a bit of buzz because Spencer already had fans, so we ended up playing bigger places faster than bands usually do, I think, which probably just means we’re really lucky.
There’s always pressure performing live, whether it’s in a little club in Montreal or in a bigger place in NYC—it doesn’t really matter whether we’ve been hyped on the Internet or anything. At this point one would hope that the actual merit for the work on the album, which has been out for five months now, has taken over for hype.
I read that Spencer provided the skeleton for the songs in Shut Up I Am Dreaming and that the rest was completed via a collaborative effort. Is that the plan for the future?
I think the next album will be done a little differently just because we’ll probably have more time to do it, but the Spencer skeleton and the band flesh is generally how we tend to do things. It works.
Given your history as a pastry chef, what would be the name of the bakery you hope to open?
Actually, I’ve been running a bakery all summer out of my friend Warren’s record shop, which is in his back porch. It’s called Backroom Records and Pastries. It is heaven on earth.
Spencer once said that you have to do some stupid stuff on tour to stay sane. Have there been any activities on this tour that clearly fit into that category?
Well, who can say what this tour will bring. Formerly, though, it was mostly wiffle ball. Also, pocket frisbees, buffets, hot tubs, golf cars, whiskey and feeding ostriches.
