Moonface - Cecil Sharp House, London 09/09/14

15 September 2014, 10:30 | Written by Russell Warfield

(Live)

(Moonface)

This is probably the longest that Spencer Krug has sat still in his whole career. Every album he’s released has been as much of a lurch sideways as forwards for the restlessly prolific artist-formerly-known-as-the-guy-from-Wolf-Parade. Moonface records – formulated after his side project Sunset Rubdown solidified into a bona fide band – allowed Krug to nurture the scraps of surplus ideas into full blown LPs. He’s moved from droning synths to Icelandic kraut to piano and voice. But here he seems to have settled for a bit.

Last year’s masterful Julia With Blue Jeans On was a potential career best for Krug, and in interviews at the time, he sounded truly excited about the organic dynamics between his voice and piano; peeling back his lyrics and structures to a more direct simplicity. Evidentially, he wasn’t talking flippantly. Tonight’s set is peppered with songs from Krug’s new EP City Wrecker – a half hour collection which finds him again at the piano in much the same tone and mood. This is something of a career first for the famously restless Krug.

You can see why he enjoys the mode so much. It’s an absolutely captivating set, finding Krug at the absolute top of his game, sounding the most powerful at his most stripped down. The sheer clarity of Krug’s voice throughout these seams of poetry is gorgeous. His warble is muscular; a note ringing out truly for seconds and seconds, but with every little crack sounding purposeful and pointed. His love affair with the natural dynamics of voice and piano is also maturing – lurching suddenly into monstrous rolls of hammering chords at one moment; floating off into the most intricate ornamentation the next.

Having made two records in a row for piano and voice, some interesting contrasts have been allowed to bubble up. Krug lived in Helsinki during the creation of Julia With Blue Jeans On, but has since moved back to Canada after two years in the city. The anxieties of feeling at home rubbing up against feeling displaced find a duality across the three years of material. He’s singing “you gotta love the house you’re in” the one moment, and calling himself a city wrecker the next. For all the strength Krug found in simplifying his language and imagery, it’s great to find him losing himself in new tangles of thorns.

Tonight’s set makes a great case for Krug to continue to explore his current fascination with piano and voice for a few more records yet. Songs like the album’s title track and “Everyone Is Noah, Everyone Is The Ark” are among the finest he’s ever crafted, and the complete control he has over everything happening on stage means that their performances evolve into deeper richness over the months and years that pass. And with songs on the new EP proving that the style still leaves him plenty of scope to unroll a twisting ten minute suite, there’s every reason to believe that this is the finest iteration of Moonface we might ever be likely to hear.