MOONFACE – Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I’d Hoped (Part 4)

Brandon takes issue with a few of Sarah’s statements. It seems like the album’s souring on him. That’ll happen when you listen to organ music over and over again for a week. Unless you’re Sarah, apparently.

From: Brandon Hall
To: Sarah Braunstein

So, wait. Do you like Organ Music? Like, like-like? Or like, “meh it’s fine; it doesn’t make me want to stab myself in the face with a rusty spade.” Because I take the latter. If anything, it’s one of a few albums I might throw on when entertaining people to either show how pretentious and into obscure music I am because I’m an insecure, vainglorious schlub, or to make them as uncomfortable as possible because I don’t particularly care for them and know they probably wouldn’t have the gumption to ask me to turn it off. We have to be polite, after all.

But I should also mention, were it not obvious, that those people at my hypothetical party suck. This album isn’t offensive or even difficult, but it is frequently boring and occasionally annoying.

I also take exception to a couple things you said. For one, you mention that the Moonface project for Krug is an “avenue for self-growth.” I would counter that unchecked, unedited creative dalliances for which you need make no defense to anyone but yourself offer little to no self-growth. In a band, you have to defend your choices, for the most part, to your band mates. And if your stuff gets tired or repetitive, someone’s probably going to tell you. I mentioned this with Greg a couple weeks ago when we discussed Pinkerton. Rivers best stuff came when he was fighting with Matt Sharp. Jeff Tweedy’s best work came in his battles with Jay Bennett. Wes Anderson/Owen Wilson. Charlie Kaufman/Michelle Gondry.

Also, wasn’t Sunset Rubdown the band with which he was supposed to be able to do whatever the hell he wanted? I actually think his best effort to date was Apologies to the Queen Mary, Wolf Parade’s first album, which sounds like the album of a unified band, whose two lead singers, Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug, hadn’t yet become auteur’s and whose side projects hadn’t yet taken off, or even been formed. They spent that album battling, stanching each others’ less crowd pleasing inclinations and pushing each other to greater heights – heights they can not and have not achieved since, as their focus was driven to their separate bands (Handsome Furs and Sunset Rubdown) and ensuing Wolf Parade albums just sounded like a mix of songs from each of those two disparate groups, rather than a unified whole.

Furthermore, when you said “There’s enough variety…that I don’t feel like I just spent 40 minutes listening to the same instrument.” Well, true, I suppose. These songs did feel, more or less filled out. But if there was more than one sound, there weren’t more than five. As for what the songs did, well, I wouldn’t say they varied.

And finally, “rockin’ organ solo?” Rockin organ solo!? I think I may have sent you the wrong album because I don’t think we were listening to the same thing.

“I am the singer at the bottom of the world,”

Brandon

Download Moonface – “Fast Peter” (mp3)