“Fast Peter”
from the album Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I’d Hoped
2011
Up to this point, a 20-minute EP consisting of a single track stood as Spencer Krug’s entire recorded output as Moonface. But even outside that context, “Fast Peter” — all eight minutes of it — would feel out of character. After all, in Krug’s lyrical purview of dragonslayers and horsemen, where does a simple bullshit session with another dude about a woman fit? You don’t get to much further info on Peter beyond a memorable opening gambit of “So, Peter loves a girl the way only Peter does / He told me all about it on the balcony when we were high on drugs.” The remaining lyrics vaguely and evoke “You Are a Runner and I Am My Father’s Son,” but the story feels encoded in the beat. The “marimbas and shit-drums” of the past have been replaced by droning organs and ticking percussion, recalling the sort of robo-Springsteen groove that his estranged musical partner Dan Boeckner has explored as Handsome Furs. But rock ‘n’ roll redemption is scarce as the machines sputter out for the last three minutes, only a tautological epitaph suggesting that the whole thing is far heavier than Krug lets on. So even with all the right angles and barreling down straightaways, “Fast Peter” has still got that Krug pretzel logic.