IIt takes a lot of courage to break someone’s heart.
Not in the normal sense of the word, perhaps, but in the idea that breaking trust and avoiding the safety of a relationship is abnormal and requires effort.
“What it means,” muses Spencer Krug, “is that the heartbreak is due to someone else’s bravery. They were brave enough to &$%@ you over. … That breach of trust. In a weird way, that’s an act of bravery.”
Cue the name of Krug’s newest album, “Heartbreaking Bravery,” which he released April 17 under the name Moonface.
It received much praise, including from Spin magazine, which called it one of the best albums of the year so far.
Krug brings with him a notable pedigree but also a penchant for avant garde recordings and for being in groups that fall apart - that’s what happened to his last two bands, prog-pop darlings Wolf Parade and later, Sunset Rubdown.
“I don’t need to work with a band,” says the British Columbia native before a show in Bloomington, Ind.
“I don’t need the rules and parameters of working together.”
That is exactly the direction he took upon ending Sunset Rubdown.
Recording as Moonface, Krug released a series of albums and EPs such as the 2011 album “Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I’d Hoped.” He described the recordings and their eclectic sounds as “haphazard,” but again, the records were favorably received by critics.
Still, Krug longed to work with a band again and be less heavy handed in the production process. That led him to the Finnish band Siinai - pronounced “seean-eye” - after two group members opened for Wolf Parade several years ago.
The instrumental rock band - think Explosions in the Sky meets kraut rock - teamed up with Krug for his latest record and gets credit for many of the compositional elements.
Now on a tour with Siinai, Krug’s combined band will cross through much of the middle part of the United States, including a show Saturday night at Smoke & Barrel Tavern in Fayetteville. Also performing are New York’s La Big Vic and locals Egyptr.
Krug says the collaboration worked because of an openness between the two parties.
They were willing to work behind the vocalist, and Krug was willing to trust members of the band, including two musicians he’d never met before landing in Helsinki for the joint recording sessions.
That kind of partnership comes in sharp contrast to the topics discussed on the album, which Krugadmits is a breakup album.
The titles of songs such as “10,000 Scorpions,” “Yesterday’s Fire” and “Faraway Lightning” serve as easy metaphors for tumult, and the lyrics are perhaps more openly personal than any Krug has written before.
While he was with Wolf Parade, he says, he wrote for the band and not just for himself. This project,he says, is a little more selfinvolved.
“I think these lyrics are a little more straightforward, a little less obtuse. And a little more revealing, I guess. I was a little nervous about sharing them that way, but that’s the way the lyrics came out.”
Although Krug says he’s being “overly adamant” about not being in a bandright now, he feels the partnership with Siinai has been positive, especially because those musicians are their own band without him and he can return to being a truly solo artist when he desires. He expects the partnership to continue for at least one more Moonface/ Siinai recording, however.
It takes courage to stay in a relationship, too.
Whats Up, Pages 12 on 06/22/2012