Moonface / Talkdemonic / Tammar @ Bowery Ballroom 10.30.11

Spencer Krug and his impeccable hair

On a Mischief Night more akin to a sleepy Sunday night than the devilish eve before Halloween, Montreal's Moonface lured costumed customers away from the holiday shenanigans to Bowery Ballroom for some nice organ music fun.

Hitting the floor well after Tammar's set, we caught Talkdemonic and became instantly enamored. The Portland, Oregon instrumental duo dropped some weather appropriate electro-folk jams that reminded Snail of I See Rowboats (now sadly disbanded). While the music was enough to reel us in, the band had us completely at their unique stage presence. Witnessing our first viola rock-out courtesy of Lisa Molinaro, we wondered why other bowed string musicians didn't get down like that, too. Drummer Kevin O'Connor kept it classy, boldly jumping from stage to floor weaving through the scantily crowded audience playing a melodica.

Blame it on Sunday, the holiday, or the efficiency of Spencer Krug's unspoken strategy to revert to obscurity with this project (we'll go with the last one), the venue only grew to about half capacity by the time Moonface came on. Dimly lit with a fireplace going in the background, Spencer and his cohort, the amazing Mike Bigelow played a set similar to their previous shows at Envelope and Mercury Lounge with a few exceptions. No "Shit-Hawk in the Snow" left room for an unreleased song Spencer admitted rips off lyrics from Real Life's 80's classic "Send Me an Angel." Quite generously, we were also gifted with a very rare encore with solo Spencer doing a beautiful cover of Fine Young Cannibals' "I'm Not The Man I Used To Be".

Seemingly growing more chatty with every leg of this tour, Mr. Krug not only entertained audience shouts but indulged us with a couple of silly anecdotes. First he recounted their plan to dress up like Jim Morrison and a member of The Blue Man Grouponly to can the idea because they'd be too busy dying of laughter to play. Later, we learned about his first run in with American police on a highway all due to a driver taking a joke sign, "Mike is stuck in a Haagen Daz container, Send Help!", on the window back of the mini van too seriously.

Keeping his promise to reinvent Moonface as he goes (he's currently recording material with Finnish band Siinai for the next release), Spencer announced this would be last time we'd hear the contents of Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I'd Hoped played live. While its bittersweet to think we'd have to wait longer than a couple months to see him live again, after three times, it's easier to say goodbye to the old songs and hello to the next musical reincarnation of Spencer Krug.  --Cheep

Photo by Charles Steinberg via The House List

Moonface/Flow Child @ Mercury Lounge 7.20.11

On this Wednesday night we revisited two of our favorite places in LES after a very long time: Teany for dinner and Mercury Lounge to see Moonface. We were welcomed into the venue to the beat of SBTRKT and danced to "Pharaohs" making up for its absence in his PS 1 set. I kept dancing funny to make Snail laugh really hard but I had to contain myself, as badly as I wanted to make her laugh I DID NOT want her to pee herself so I held back.

She lucked out because my dances did not match opener Flow Child's tune. This dude, who resembled Grizzly Bear Chris Taylor's little brother, tweaked knobs to create weird whimsy beats that reminded us of Animal Collective and scenes of candy colored fantasy creatures like pink hippos and rainbow-haired polycorns at times -- all in an old bata that had another life as a v-neck that turned into a crewneck and then a frayed boatneck. After his set, the venue's mystery mixmaster played "My Girls" and validated our keen ears.

I continued to clown out and kill Snail. A nice young man from Arkansas named Eli turned around to speak to us, curious about our raucousness. We discussed Flow Child's bata situation and I fell in love with his T-shirt. On the back it said, in German and Helvetica font "Bier trinkt man nicht nur zum Frühstück" (roughly "beer is not only for breakfast.")  He was surprised we didn't make incest jokes since he was from Arkansas. Who the fuck does that shit? A bunch a people he met in New York so far apparently. "You've been talking to a lot dicks" Snail said. "I guess so," Eli replied. And so we talked about his stay in NYC, he compared it to living in Berlin and my heart skipped a beat at the thought of my own impending dream of living in Germany's capital city.

Spencer Krug and Mike Bigelow had a similar effect on all of the crowd who cheered the duo on as they climbed on the stage. Before going all in on the whole of Moonface's freshly released Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I'd Hoped, Spencer forewarned his organ was broken and joked if they fucked up and the show had to stop we were all going to get in their October show for free. In usual form, Krug played every song as if it was his last. His hair gone wild in fan wind and fingers undulating on the keys, he danced, no stool in his way this time, just the music moving him like a tuning fork that occasionally dips and shakes his hips. Mike wasn't far behind beating those electric drums with his whole body, working himself into a massive sweat.

They ended it all with non-encore Swan Lake's "All Fires" which Spencer prefaced with another funny comment, "This is our last song, so we can all get out of here...its Wednesday, we can all go home and watch movies on our laptops." The song caused a fanboy next to us to go into a nervous, excited frenzy. We saw him singing all the words to the songs earlier and concluded it was a privilege to finally stand next someone who outdid our frenzied fandom.

The venue played us out with some DJ Shadow. I stole a poster of the show as a keepsake and we were sad we didn't have any money for the Organ Music... vinyl or tour poster. Snail, being her Honest Abe self asked a security guard if she could take the other Moonface poster that was up and in that instant this drugged up fatty snatched it. We could've easily tripped him and stole it from him, but we had committed enough petty crimes for the night.

Related: Moonface/Matteah Baim @ Envelope 5.6.11

Moonface/Matteah Baim @ Envelope 05.06.11

Friday night we rode to L to the Jefferson stop to see Spencer Krug as Moonface. We've declared our love for the man and his music plenty of times here, so to attempt to describe how happy we were to see him in a 65-person capacity space is a bit challenging. Let's just say it was sickening.

The fourth-floor candle-lit apartment boasted a warm --it was quite tropical in there-- and relaxed atmosphere that made this event feel more more like party in some friend's living room --giant cat portrait painting included-- than a concert. It was as though we were invited to check out what they were working on lately, like good old friends, mad casual.

The show opened with a quick set of Matteah Baim's beautiful haunting folk songs. After a short sound check, it was on to Moonface's first show ever. There was no Dreamland EP to be heard but plenty of marimba and shit drums via band mate Mike Bigelow on rad new songs nobody had heard before including the hilariously titled "Shithawk." A slender Spencer did his thing looking like a mad scientist, whipping his long hair about and stomping on the ground behind all those buttons on his "golden pipes" and synthesizers.

It was great to see Spencer thriving in this intimate setting. He seemed more playful than usual in between songs, joking around "seriously, guys, if you could just crawl up here one by one and see there's just so many buttons" and "doot-dooting" while playing with his globe tap lamp in between raising his glass to cheer with us. Serious appreciation also goes to Mike who killed it on the percussion end, holding his own complimenting Krug's brilliance. When we weren't dancing to the new downright crazy electro beats and trying not to pass out in the heat, we spent the show eyes darting between their hypnotizing cohesive energy.

Then to our awesome surprise, Sunset Rubdown's Camilla Wynne Ingr crawled on stage to sing a couple of songs, concluding with Swan Lake's "All Fires," during which she slugged sips from a bottle of Jameson at the instrumental parts and poked fun at Spencer for covering his own song. Needless to say, she's our kind of lady, and obviously the entire room's because as soon as she got off the stage she was surrounded by many a person telling her, "you are so cool."

Though everyone stuck around post show to finish their fancy drinks or get a chance to talk to the band or just not to waste the rest of a perfectly good Friday, ousted by the heat and habit we went home along in our usual haze of gratitude and feeling like what just happened was one great incredible dream. A wonderful Spring evening indeed.

Spencer said the new album should be out around August!