Sunset Rubdown has a vibrator and they know how to use it.

They also have a songwriter -- Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade -- who can spin a pop song into an anthem so glorious, so desperate, it makes you want to punch the people nearby to get out the agitated emotion it roils. Seriously, punch people. Not in anger, but in the way we pinch ourselves to make sure something is real or to feel what the brain can't.

But back to the vibrator. The Montreal band started their early evening show Tuesday at the High Noon Saloon with the tinkling opening to "The Empty Threats of Little Lord" (off their 2006 album "Shut Up I Am Dreaming"). Percussionist/keyboardist Camilla Wynne Ingr dragged a buzzing Silver Bullet vibrator across the keys of a small xylophone and teased a couple of cymbals with it, creating a ringing sound halfway between the brush of a fairy wand and a priest's communion bell in the Catholic High Mass.

It was an ingenious use of a nonmusical instrument and typical of Sunset Rubdown's creativity. Krug, all nervous bounce and jiggle-foot intensity at his keyboard, clearly inspires the other four members and wraps them up in his ideas. The band is drunk on invention but sharp and sober in the execution.

Songs flowed into one another as the band quickly switched instruments. They often had two drum sets going simultaneously. They led into "Coming to at Dawn" by sinking deeply as a group into an atmospheric wave created with a bow on an electric guitar and cymbals manipulated to sound like a flapping sheet of aluminum.

Krug writes catchy pop hooks but gets bored with them quickly, so the music lurches with epic swells of emotion and consistently catches the listener by surprise.

Most Sunset Rubdown songs have a mythic feel to them and lyrics that should be shouted from the top of a building. The live performance only heightens this. Lines like "I believe in growing old with grace" from "Silver Moons" sound a bit contrived and impersonal on the band's otherwise excellent recent album "Dragonslayer," but Krug tore into them with soaring conviction live.

The upside of an early show is that you're done and out of there with time leftover to go see "Where the Wild Things Are," as Krug suggested. The downside is that everyone gets scooted out promptly at 9 p.m. to allow for the next act, in this case "Gomeroke" (live band karaoke with the Gomers).

After announcing they could only play two more songs, Krug added, "Then we have to go because apparently there's karaoke." A few people shouted out suggestions of karaoke songs for him to sing.

"I'm sorry, guys, none of those. We're going to do our own karaoke where we sing our own songs," he joked.

The band led out the show out with "The Mending of the Gown" and "Dragon's Lair," but no encore. They wanted to, they said, but weren't allowed -- an announcement met with a chorus of boos.

Opener tUnE-YaRdS played a short, spellbinding set. Singer and multi-instrumentalist Merrill Garbus warbles and yodels unselfconsciously.

Afterwards at the merch table, with a stack of her album "BiRd-BrAiNs" in front of her, she explained that she started yodeling as a way to protect what she thought was an injured vocal cord nodule. It turned out she was just being a hypochondriac, she said, but the singing style stuck. She explored it further after listening to music out of the Pygmy cultures of Central Africa.

The African influence comes through in her music. She used one mic for real-time singing and one mic to deftly record and loop her ukulele, drumming and voice into a polyphonic mash-up. She brought two talented bandmates onstage for a few songs, bassist Nate Brenner and guitarist Patrick Gregoire, but she's clearly the force behind the music.

Login to post your comment. If you don't have an account, you may register for one.