Quick, Before It Melts.

Wolf Parade have so many splinter projects going, its become difficult to distinguish what their main project is, or if there was ever one. Dan Boeckner and his wife Alexei Perry have released the Handsome Furs album this year, and now Spencer Krug and Sunset Rubdown have followed up last year's brilliantly titled Shut Up, I'm Dreaming with the equally catchy Random Spirit Lover.

I imagine that at one time, a band of strolling minstrels made their way across the barren, virgin Canadian wilderness. As they stumbled upon small covens of lumberjack hermits raising herds of half-moose/half-beaver creatures (which they lovingly referred to as "Boosers") the minstrels learned the stories and traditions of the hermit lumberjack, and married the woodsmen's tales to their canon of mystical, fable-inspired folk ballads.

Flash forward 200 years or so, and picture a dusty attic, in a Victorian-era home nestled somewhere in the heart of Montreal (le coeur, if you will), where a young lad, whose dream of indie-rock superstardom was still yet a twinkle in his eye, happens across a dusty tome of collected sheet music once belonging to these ancient minstrels. Through the haze of attic dust and weed he and his pals decide to form a band, and record these songs, reviving the ancient traditions and returning them to the world. Something tells me, those songs would sound a hell of a lot like Sunset Rubdown. Don't believe me? Listen to this and tell me I'm wrong:

Sunset Rubdown, "Up on your Leopard, Upon the End of your Feral Days"
~ from the album Random Spirit Lover, 2007 (Jagjaguwar)