Moonface’s Julia With Blue Jeans On is the kind of album you listen to once and never forget. It unapologetically commands full attention and respect, and refuses to back down throughout the last chord. This album is heavy. I mean weight-of-the-world-on-your-shoulders heavy. I mean agonizingly heavy. I mean “it should be impossible for one person and a piano to create this kind of heaviness” heavy. Apathetic and wise, Julia With Blue Jeans On composes exactly the type of atmosphere for the lost, lonely and misunderstood.
This is art. It isn’t a study jam, it isn’t something you play on your walk to and from classes, it isn’t something you turn on when friends come over. This is something you listen to when you have absolutely nothing else to do. Its lyrics are prose-like and poetic, its chords resonate with the power of breaking glass. To play this as background music is to disrespect all of the broken emotion poured into its creation. Full of voice for those who have lost their own, this album stuns.
Mastermind Spencer Krug’s shaking voice and the power of his piano are strong organic forces to be reckoned with. The sound of a man pushed to the edge, eager to express himself, is such an intimate experience, its almost unwelcoming. Almost. There’s room to relate and say, “I’ve been there,” and it is in this space the album gets its power. It comes from a place nobody wants to be or talk about—a volatile, adult place where ideals exist no longer. However, there is still an element of accessibility that brings light to this blackened place of inner turmoil.
This was one of the hardest reviews I’ve ever had to write. To capture the essence of this album and to try to explain it to those who haven’t listened to it yet is doing a disservice to both the artist himself and this review’s audience. Julia With Blue Jeans On is dark and it’s beautiful, and as a work of art it is nothing short of effective.
Grade: A
