There are musicians and songs that rock me and set me to boil and explode. There are transcendent lyrisists that build towers of words and happen to strum or pluck an instrument too and they reduce me to swooning and melting. Then they're are a few that speak words that pass through air undetected, buzzing right into your blood stream woven with tunes that set your very cells and particles abuzz. These can make menial jobs bearable, can make rainy afternoons and sunny fields more alluring than lottery jackpots. These songs alter the rhythm of your heart until it beats in steady 3/4 time.
Last night Sunset Rubdown took the stage at the Free Mason's Society in Ft. Greene, all of them baby-faced and silhouetted by lowered house lights. It was startling to see these kids playing songs like veteran musicians on reunion tour. They played perfection exchanging small glances and shy smiles between songs sang in entirety with closed eyes. They were made of skin and hair and wore cotton. I don't know what else I was expecting, but maybe something along the lines of old souls that hovered as colors above an empty stage and the sound just pushing and oozing into every space between and in us. Holding hands with Jenny we swayed and lilted to each song which they played with ire, whimsy, and intense purity... only slightly faster. Never would I expect to hear "Up on Your Leopard" as a rocked out power song.
To beat the exodus of stockinged and belted ladies and their bearded boyfriends that was surely to have clotted Lafayette and Adelphi Streets we left just before the last few bars of the encore. It was such an intense show as it was and if SR had decided to finish up on a sweetly sad note, then we would've found ourselves with streaming mascara. I imagined them running off, dancing and bucking like the stallions, leopards, and princes they sing about leaving their gear on stage and returning to whatever mountain top they live on to watch us humans through a crystal ball or still pond as we toil; trying, failing, succeeding, flailing. And then they figure out how to say it and make it sound more beautiful than it is. And then they sing it back to us in bars and auditoriums and we squeeze each other's hands and we buzz and fizz and we are glad to be human because to err and triumph means to be closer to Sunset Rubdown.
enjoy.
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