Moonface With Siinai - Heartbreaking Bravery

It’s getting harder and harder to tell exactly what Moonface ‘is’. Introduced as a sort-of side project to the sort-of side project Sunset Rubdown, the ‘band’ released its debut full length release last year, a weird (although, with Krug you can pretty much take that as read) collection of drawn out organ-based pop experiments. A year later, Moonface’s follow up takes an (un)predictably different direction: a dense and heavy hearted suite of break up songs, supported by the slowly expanding backdrops of Icelandic band Siinai’s kraut-rock stylings. It seems that Moonface (like Sunset Rubdown was before it) ‘is’ - if anything - a catch-all name permitting Krug to chase his eccentric musical whims down album-long alleyways. Which is to say that Moonface remains very welcome indeed.

The point that Krug commits to a singular focus for album-long running times is a crucial one, meaning that while Moonface resists any fixed identity, the individual records released under its name aren’t scattershot flingings of mud at a wall - they instead explore a particular style or sound, creating an immersive listen. The last Wolf Parade LP - a similarly collaborative effort - zig-zagged distractingly between styles and sounds, feeling like a dumping ground for ideas not deemed exciting enough for the two songwriters’ more adventurous side projects. Heartbreaking Bravery by contrast, despite being an even more resolutely ‘collaborative’ piece, coalesces into a distinctly rounded whole, resulting in Krug’s most tightly focussed and unified collection of songs (or, more accurately, album) since at least Dragonslayer - maybe of his entire career.

Krug and Siiani lay out all their cards in the opening track, and stick to their guns for the remaining nine. Sporting the idiocentric lyricism and vocal work traditionally associated with Krug, these songs march (although, I nearly said ‘plod’) forwards with a robust mid-tempo stride, the arrangements intensifying not through increases of tempo or sharply shifting dynamics, but through subtle movements in the textural patchwork of looping phrases and droning synths. Although these songs do loosely adhere to verse-chorus structures, they don’t feel structured with a pop-instinct for build and release in mind. Instead, these tracks feel like they originally existed as an extended instrumental suite - intricate rhythm sounds and hypnotic repetition taking their sweet time to deliver payoffs in the most subtle manner possible.

Heartbreaking Bravery’s singular focus is at once its greatest strength and its primary downfall. While it’s definitely true to say that these ten tracks feel part of a satisfyingly indivisible whole, it also means that (especially since it hinges so strongly on repetition and metronomic mid-tempo paces) the record sags at several points along the ride, the listener gasping for a little dynamism and diversity. The brief moments where the album displays a bit of spunk (the shattering synth line on ‘I’m Not The Phoneix Yet’; the shimmering dance texture of ‘Shitty City’) are welcome beacons seeming all the brighter in the midst of an album which frequently feels like its wading through tar. As the self-consciously epic closer ‘Lay Your Cheek On Down’ moves through its paces, you might have long since lost patience with Krug’s melodramatic indulgence and tight adherence to the album’s proggy sound. For all its plentiful merits and frequent instances of dark beauty, Heartbreaking Bravery is arguably overlong, and certainly difficult to cherry-pick your way through. But for the listener who commits to the album’s sound with the same patience that Krug and Siinai have, there’s a lot to reward discerning ears and existing Krug fans.