CD: Moonface - Organ Music not Vibraphone Music Like I’d Hoped

Spencer Krug must have problems knowing the name he should adopt. Over the past six years, he’s played with his main band, Wolf Parade, recorded as or with Fifths of Seven, Frog Eyes, Moonface, Sunset Rubdown and Swan Lake. Organ Music not Vibraphone Music Like I’d Hoped is his second release as Moonface, a guise he now reserves for his entirely solo work. Organ Music... is quirky, but worth hearing.

Wolf Parade (nothing to do with Wolf Gang) are often driving, anthemic indie rockers on a line between Animal Collective and Krug’s fellow Montréal dwellers Arcade Fire. Moonface, though, follows the path Krug developed with Sunset Rubdown of building a release around a single instrument. So his first Moonface release was subtitled Marimba and Shit-drums. Now he’s got an organ, not the vibes he’d thought of using. Hence the silly title.

Those afflicted by musical logorrhoea are usually inconsistent or lack quality control – the need to express overrides all. Krug’s look-at-me wackiness is never far. Titles include “Shit-hawk in the Snow”, “Whale Song (Song Instead of a Kiss)” and “Return to the Violence of the Ocean Floor”. “Fast Peter” is the standout. A sped-up Bontempi-style organ rhythm machine drives keyboard swells that could’ve graced Kraftwerk’s Ralf and Florian or Cluster’s Zuckerzeit. It’s thrown off balance by Krug’s declamatory voice, which turns it into a bargain-basement cousin of Robert Palmer’s “Johnny and Mary”. “Shit-hawk in the Snow” is late-Seventies synth oddities The Normal or Fad Gadget made over with baroque flourishes.

Although there are no synths on Organ Music…, the album feels like a late-Seventies experimentalist grappling with the idea that pop is within reach. Whether that’s what Krug was thinking, who knows? He’s probably already completed another couple of albums.

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Listen to “Fast Peter” from Moonface’s Organ Music not Vibraphone Music Like I’d Hoped