ALBUM SPOTLIGHT: Moonface - City Wrecker EP

“City Wrecker”

“Daughter of a Dove”

Spencer Krug is one of my all-time favorite artists. The dude literally guided my taste in music throughout my high school days, from the raucous and rugged pop of Wolf Parade, to the whimsical ballads and mythological epics of Sunset Rubdown and Swan Lake. His cryptic and metaphoric lyrics made him one of my heroes, and like some sort of doe-eyed son, I’m proud to say that he’s one of the few artists of that era that has gracefully matured, changing his sound with age, but not his essence.

On Krug’s last album, as well as his most recent City Wrecker EP, he has stripped down his sound to nothing but a piano and his captivating voice. Its a move that was off-putting to some, but to those who truly appreciate the essence of Krug, its been like looking through a translucent window into the depths of his soul. You see the pain and the struggle wrestling with hope on a raging sea of raw yet beautiful turmoil. The innocuous distractions of youth are gone, while the cryptic mixture of poetry and prose remains.

City Wrecker is about the ennui that permeates 21st century society on an unprecedented scale. How culture, and therefore those who live within that culture, are made to hate their surroundings. The life that’s been unwittingly handed to us makes us long for more at the expense of those and the places we surround ourselves with. It’s a introspective record that manages to reflect the outside world. After all, society shapes individuals, and individuals shape society, a never ending cycle that spirals into oblivion.