Speaker Face - Crescent (2020)

While the term ‘folktronica’ has always made me squirm somewhat, at the very least it does strongly suggest what kind of sound to expect of an act categorized thus. In which case, a prime example of this organic-meets-synthetic subgenre would be the Toronto-based Speaker Face.

Until this second full-length release, Speaker Face has been operating as a duo, being Trent Freeman and Eric Wright. If the names seem familiar, it’ll be because on violin and cello respectively they form half of the instrumental Celtic music specialists, The Fretless, a brilliant, multi-award-winning string band trading in progressive arrangements of (largely Irish) traditional material, often with an intensity befitting rock music.

As beautifully illustrated on their gorgeous 2016 debut, Driftwood, in combining synthesizers and beat-making technology with a Rhodes piano, violins and vocals, Speaker Face has found a sound all their own, one that cherry-picks elements of the folk idiom the pair work in so blazingly, successfully incorporated into crisp, moody synth-pop compositions.

Driftwood featured three guest vocalists on a track each, namely Taylor Ashton, Rachel Sermanni, and the silky-voiced Ruby Randall, who has now joined Freeman and Wright full-time to round out Speaker Face as a trio. Formerly of the Toronto band beau, and influenced by such as Land of Talk and Sharon Van Etten, Randall’s upbringing saw her exposed to plenty of Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Canadian folk, and bluegrass – especially as her father was an active musician in the latter realm. A social worker by day, before joining Speaker Face Randall had issued a handful of standalone tracks and, in 2011, Until the Dust Settles, a lovely, banjo-led, 4-song folk EP issued on the consistently excellent Other Songs Music Co., one of my favourite Canadian independent concerns.

Like its predecessor, Crescent presents a melancholy mood, typified by the haunting opener, Phosphorescence. Of all things, the first notes and insistent central Rhodes riff are reminiscent of the introduction to Imagination’s massive 1982 pop hit, Just an Illusion, before it settles into a pretty, gauzy song built on Wright’s light beat, and featuring sporadic, subtle violin flourishes from Freeman. Should you need it – especially as Randall’s breathy vocal is not dissimilar to Papineau’s – an obvious touchstone would be Jun Miyake and Lisa Papineau’s wondrous song The Here and After, from the soundtrack of Wim Wenders’ extraordinary 2011 tributary documentary Pina, about the work of the late German choreographer, Pina Bausch. At 5:29, Phosphorescence is Crescent’s longest track, and the perfect primer for what’s to follow.

There’s no way to mask the real-life tragedy behind the second cut, entitled Trevor. Although fleshed out by contributions from Freeman and Randall, the lyrics are based on poems found, after his passing, on the computer of the late Trevor Ashwell, a dear friend of Freeman’s. After four wheelchair-bound years as a quadriplegic following a serious swimming accident in 2013, Ashwell was killed in November 2017 when the vehicle in which he was travelling was hit head-on by another car, the collision also killing the other driver. According to Freeman, Ashwell was a real fighter who was making huge progress mentally until his impossibly tragic end, and while understandably dolorous the song named for and written partially by him is a touching tribute.

Crescent’s other lyrical collaboration comes on the following All My Mind, for which Freeman teamed up with Twin Bandit’s Hannah Walker. A slinky yet still downbeat track, it’s a beauty, as is Work Friends, which offers the album’s funkiest groove to this point, yet that said is still delicate and chill to the max, like a rootsier Morcheeba, and blessed with wonderful violin work from Freeman. Please, Allow Me to Show You Something is up next, based on a skittering Wright rhythm and peppered with spoken word samples wafting in and out, while Wright delightfully mucks about with his various electronics and Freeman runs quiet riot overhead with his vintage violin.

That’s about as hectic and danceable as proceedings get, with the shuffling, glitchy Call Me Out reestablishing the pensive, ruminative mood. The beautiful Rest boasts a barely-there, head-nodding beat, the song relying more on Randall’s quiet vocal and Freeman’s gently propulsive Rhodes chords to push it through. It’s an absolute stunner. Dusted follows, and is another deeply reflective, slow-paced composition of true beauty. Sick Mind displays Randall’s affecting voice at its crystal clearest, atop another barely perceptible, slower-than-a-heartbeat tempo and Wright’s gentle, hallucinatory electronic explorations.

Co-mixed (with Wright) and mastered by the legendary Canadian studio technician David Travers-Smith, the self-produced Crescent concludes with its title track, a trippy tune consistent with its overarching doleful atmosphere – but, please, don’t let the melancholia put you off, because this is a classic example what Speaker Face do – even live – and this second offering is an album of pure class, indisputable elegance, compositional invention and, above all, rich emotional rewards.