When it comes to Spencer Krug, it’s best to leave your expectations at the door. The British Columbia native has been in a state of constant metamorphosis since making his bow with Wolf Parade back in 2003. He’s been an active musician for 10 years, but there’s a feeling that he’s been building towards this album that whole time. His Moonface project has so far displayed some of his most diverse songwriting to date, but it’s on his 3rd full-length album under that banner that Krug has struck gold.
Julia With Blue Jeans On is Moonface’s sparsest offering yet, featuring nothing more than Krug’s voice and his expressive piano playing – neither of which have found themselves in the spotlight in this way before. While it is sometimes easy to imagine the 10 songs which make up his new record as full-band compositions, this pared-back approach to songwriting ensures that nothing is lost, and everything has the desired effect.
Though the compositional makeup of album 3 differs exponentially from last year’s Siinai-assisted Heartbreaking Bravery, the two records do have one major thread in common: Krug’s latest offers up an even more emotional take on the themes its predecessor introduced. Eye-opening lead single ‘Everyone is Noah, Everyone is the Ark’ was a searing meditation on grief (‘I’m really sorry for your loss – I can’t imagine how that feels / Please build yourself up’), while ‘Barbarian II’ finds Krug in particularly self-lacerating form (‘If I am an animal, I am one of the few that is self-destructive / I have chewed through my beautiful muscle / I have chewed through my beautiful narrative / To get out of Canada and into your door’).
The latter track acts as somewhat of a coda to the sprawling, 6-and-a-half-minute album opener, ‘Barbarian’, a song which is as technically impressive as it is melodically powerful. ‘I’ve been a barbarian for most of my life,’ Krug reflects on a song whose changes of key and time signature are jaw-dropping in their execution, particularly during a restless instrumental coda that ensures that the song finishes on an impossibly elating high. Of course, that’s not to say that Julia With Blue Jeans On reaches its peak on the opening track – there are plenty more highs to come.
The most notable of these acts as the album’s centrepiece. ‘Dreamy Summer’ stretches past the 8-minute mark, relying on an emotive, minor-key melody that favours a slow build, taking 6 minutes to reach its climax before falling away amidst a barrage of busy triplet rhythms and an inescapable feeling that after a decade in the business of making music, Krug is now in his element, something backed up by the brooding grandeur of the title track and the pop precision of the album’s penultimate track, ‘Black is Back in Style’, on which the emotional weight of Krug’s lyrics is given an immediately accessible boost: an ‘I’ll Believe in Anything’ for those fond of gut-wrenching, piano-driven music.
‘Your Chariot Awaits’ caps things off with a flourish; it’s one of the most spine-tingling moments in Krug’s entire catalogue, and adds serious weight to the assertion that Julia With Blue Jeans On is the best thing he’s ever been involved with. I can definitely get behind that. My commiserations to At Mount Zoomer, my previous Krug-related favourite – I just didn’t expect it, as well as most of 2013’s competition, to be completely blown out of the water by this.
