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Sep 15, 2014The record works perfectly as a coda to what sounded like an unusually comfortable period in Spencer’s life. It’s not quite as unadorned, not quite as intimate, as Julia--opener “The Fog” has its title represented by jarring clouds of synths which break through the eight note motif that underpins the entire song--but you can still tell that all fifteen of Piano Man Spencer’s songs came from the same place.
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Oct 13, 2014Aside from its musical merits--like, it’s really beautiful--the City Wrecker EP is interesting in a typical kind of meta-Krug way.
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Sep 18, 2014Overall, it could use more joyous highs to balance out the lows. But still, his classical piano chops mean there’s never a dull moment--even with eight-and 10-minute tracks.
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Sep 16, 2014The more you listen to this collection of songs, the more it develops.
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Sep 15, 2014With this EP, Krug demonstrates that less is more, but that it also doesn't hurt to go big, even if "big" in this case is an expertly timed digital synth here and there.
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Sep 15, 2014The EP alternates between dense metaphor and wistful candour; the places artists invent to retreat from their problems, and confessional accounts of the places they literally go, in retreat; solo piano as a cipher for authenticity... and ethereal synthscapes as a cipher for utopian fantasy. What distinguishes it is that there's an epiphany at the end.
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Under The RadarDec 19, 2014Krug is turning out some of the most beautiful and lyrically compelling songs around. [Dec 2014, p.88]
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Sep 18, 2014This is the first true repetition of musical focus in the Moonface catalog, and yet these five songs feel subtly different that the sweeping nature of Julia With Blue Jeans On.
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Sep 15, 2014The EP feels like a great extension of Julia with Blue Jeans On, and one can't help but wonder what phase Krug will develop toward with the next Moonface installment as he moves from one place to the next.
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Sep 15, 2014On City Wrecker, in the swirling synths and bottled righteousness, you can hear Krug stirring the embers.
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Sep 16, 2014Where Julia filled almost every available space with either emotional fullness or palpable absence, City Wrecker feels pinched and constrained; the former was a drain to listen to in the best possible way, while this new one only occasionally breaks the skin.
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Sep 16, 2014Spending more time alone with the grand piano has helped Krug open up the personal side of his lyrics, limiting the symbolism somewhat in favor of more direct emotional lines.