{"id":57167,"date":"2016-12-22T18:31:27","date_gmt":"2016-12-22T16:31:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ngradio.gr\/en\/?p=57167"},"modified":"2016-12-22T18:31:27","modified_gmt":"2016-12-22T16:31:27","slug":"alexis-petridiss-album-week-moonface-siinai-best-human-face-review-strangeness-charm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ngradio.gr\/en\/news-el\/music-en\/alexis-petridiss-album-week-moonface-siinai-best-human-face-review-strangeness-charm\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexis Petridis’s album of the week Moonface and Siinai: My Best Human Face review \u2013 strangeness and charm"},"content":{"rendered":"

No one could ever accuse Spencer Krug of a taking a languorous approach to his music. Over the last decade, the Canadian singer-songwriter\u2019s output has been torrential: he\u2019s released something like 20 albums and EPs, under an impressive variety of names. The most famous is Wolf Parade<\/a>, a Montreal quartet whose very name can cause a certain kind of Pitchfork-scouring music fan\u2019s heart to skip a beat: look online and you can find bloggers unironically describing their 2005 debut Apologies to the Queen Mary<\/a> as \u201cdecade-defining\u201d, as if rock music in the noughties changed irrevocably in its wake. Then there\u2019s Frog Eyes<\/a>, his original outfit and sometime backing band for Dan Bejar<\/a>, better known as Destroyer. That association begat Swan Lake<\/a>, an \u201cindie supergroup\u201d involving both Bejar and Krug, whose sound the latter enticingly compared to \u201ca boar drowning in a tar pit\u201d. There\u2019s also Sunset Rubdown<\/a> and the Fifths of Seven<\/a> \u2013 challengingly described a \u201cCanadian instrumental string\/piano\/accordion trio\u201d \u2013 and Krug\u2019s solo project, Moonface<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even compared with a band who sound like a boar drowning in a tar pit and an instrumental string\/piano\/accordion trio, Moonface often seems the most abstruse and arcane of the lot. At one juncture the big idea seemed to be making records that focused on a single instrument: Krug\u2019s first release in this guise was a 20-minute track based on the marimba; the second, an album called Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I\u2019d Hoped, offered up songs performed on what sounded like the kind of electronic keyboard sold by Argos in the mid-80s; its follow-up, Julia With Blue Jeans On, was comprised entirely of stark piano ballads. In between, Moonface occasionally releases albums made in collaboration with a Finnish Krautrock-inspired instrumental band called Siinai.<\/p>\n

With the best will in the world, a Pitchfork-rated indie rock auteur with avant garde leanings collaborating with a Finnish Krautrock-inspired instrumental band is not a pitch likely to cause Amazon\u2019s server to crash as the general public excitedly descend en masse, credit card details in hand. Nevertheless, the marked thing about their second album together is how straightforwardly appealing the songs are. The arrangements Siinai cook up on My Best Human Face are really intriguing \u2013 The arrangements Siinai cook up on My Best Human Face are really intriguing \u2013 a thrilling, supercharged, stadium-sized version of Krautrock\u2019s motoric pounding on Risto\u2019s Riff<\/a>; the sickly-sounding, slap-bass-driven take on 80s AOR that decorates City Wrecker; Prairie Boy<\/a>\u2019s weird blend of funk and intricate post-rock guitar riffing.<\/p>\n