A Week With Swan Lake's "Beast Moans": Day 4
20 November 2006
tell your friends...
Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Abigail Bruley
Most everywhere you read these days, Spencer Krug’s being compared to a worker bee or a busy beaver. Sometimes the modifiers are flipped and it’s a busy bee and worker beaver or just plain ol’ beaver. The implication is unwarped. It’s that he’s working his hide off this year and in most regards, these are the 12 months over which time Krug has made more of a name for himself than even he did last year, with the fascinating Wolf Parade breakout album Apologies to the Queen Mary. More so than Carey Mercer or Dan Bejar, Krug’s efforts on Beast Moans solidify his status as one of the best writers of the year. “Are You Swimming In Her Pools?” is the prime example of the very things that Krug does exceptionally. He—through supreme effort and pure fucking magic—creates epic songs that are more stained glass windows than mere mortal music. He takes a subject and then spiral staircases it downward, picking up steam and burn as it slides as if riding the gloss of that staircase’s banister. This song’s probably not about a kidney-shaped backyard pool, but likely more about tear ducts or something more ambiguous. It and “All Fires” are extensions of all of the things that he did so well on Sunset Rubdown’s Shut Up I Am Dreaming—the emoting and the turmoil boiling like hot popcorn oil until the optimum heat was reached and then they blow holes in the walls when they explode into miraculous roadhouse torrents. I think that what I mean is that the greatness in these songs comes in their roughshod finish and their short tempers. That’s what I mean by roadhouse if the face value wasn’t clear. To a large extent this entire record embraces that aesthetic and on “Pools,” the part of the song that you really love automatically is the beginning of the second verse when Krug starts singing and then mumbles to a halt, the song starts up again and he goes about the same words as if nothing had been rolling and nothing had been fumbled. It was such a happy flub and it really stands out as one of the most personable and lovely bits in the record—where he, Mercer and Bejar weren’t trying to do too much. There’s similar moment like this at the start of “The Freedom” where Bejar asks for someone to tell him when it’s rolling. He hacks the cue and then begins again, leaving the mistake in the mix. Why that pleases me, I don’t know. All I know is that both of those small ticks in time were quaint—barren and unburdened the way it might have been best to hear these three guys get it on.
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You and I are practically on the same wavelength.
“Spencer Krug is the best songwriter of the 21st century. His tracks absolutely blow me away. He was my favorite of the three coming into Swan Lake, and remains so as I listen,” I wrote.
“Maybe Beast Moans is simply gushy.”
Great!