Julia With Blue Jeans On
Spencer Krug (a.k.a. Moonface) is a heartfelt and intelligent singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist whose talents exceed the limits of music formatting. He’s already contributed mightily to albums by Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, and many other groups, but none have provided him with the right format for these grand-piano based songs, which bleed with the emotional intensity of Meatloaf but with spare arrangements that keep the songs within a small club’s reach (piano and vocal). This isn’t even like previous Moonface releases. From the first notes of “Barbarian,” one imagines Krug alone on a stage bearing his soul under a single spotlight—sitting at a piano and only stopping long enough to denote a new composition or sneak a sip of water. “Everyone Is Noah, Everyone Is the Ark” adds trills and vocal gymnastics, and from there the songs flow like a guilty confession that’s been pent up for too long. Fans of Scott Walker, Laura Nyro, Robert Wyatt, and other complex, unpredictable songwriters should thrill to unravel these musical and lyrical mysteries.
Featuring nothing but piano and his voice, Julia With Blue Jeans On is Spencer Krug's starkest, most gripping Moonface record to date. It's also one of the finest LPs of his prolific, unpredictable career.
The second full length from Spencer Krug under his Moonface moniker gets things back to basics, and creates wonders with just a piano and his distinctive vocals.
On Julia With Blue Jeans On, Krug's third album under the Moonface moniker, the move is to strip everything bare, just him and a piano singing honest, romantic and unguarded songs that have their peaks and have their craters, as is coming to be expected from the gifted songwriter.
The second long-player under the Moonface moniker for mercurial Canadian multi-instrumentalist/singer/songwriter Spencer Krug (Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown), the Jagjaguar-issued Julia with Blue Jeans On eschews the brooding and reductionist, synth-heavy art-pop of previous outings for an even more austere approach, offering up an evocative and emotionally present set of stripped-down asymmetrical love songs that pairs Krug's distinctive voice with a lone baby grand piano.
On Julia…, Spencer Krug confirms Moonface the most diverse of his storied musical projects. After solo synth-prog debut Organ Music… and 2012’s full-band, rock-slanted Siinai collaboration Heartbreaking Bravery, he could arguably have taken his sound absolutely anywhere, so the decision to contrarily turn inwards and produce a stripped-back piano and voice collection feels instinctively like a stroke of genius – a purified reminder of his core compositional abilities, and a more complete exploration of a side to his writing previously only glimpsed.
A Spencer Krug piano album-it had to happen sometime. In truth, the indie rock canon Krug's been mining over the past decade always seemed ill-fitting for his spectral croon.
Moonface’s Julia with Blue Jeans On is a tight song cycle about finding love in a cold climate.
Strewn across Spencer Krug’s discography is the mention of long distance relationships. On “Shut Up I Am Dreaming Of Places Where Lovers Have Wings” from his 2006 Sunset Rubdown album, he details a romance with someone who is “on the distant shore” who Krug wants to send “drawings of men with faithful hands [that] will