For more than two decades, Canadian singer/songwriter Spencer Krug has been one of indie rock’s most singular and unpredictable voices, whether co-fronting Wolf Parade, steering the haunted grandeur of Sunset Rubdown or spinning more introspective yarns as Moonface. With Same Fangs (Pronounced Kroog), Krug engages in a fairly thorough emotional excavation, initially with just voice and keys.
Built from demos originally shared through Patreon in 2024 and 2025, the material was re-recorded over a week on British Columbia’s Gabriola Island. Enhancements like strings, textural guitar lines and spectral harmonies add depth without disrupting the intimate mission of a guy long associated with sprawling art-rock narratives narrowing the frame and finding new emotional weight in clarity.
Here’s Krug’s rundown of each song.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Get To Live”
“The album begins with a voice memo: me talking to myself at the piano, deciding how and where this song will be used. Originally starting with the phrase, ‘You’ve got to live,’ the lyrics were changed to, ‘You get to live,’ as an attempt to embrace gratitude rather than regret. This sentiment becomes one of the threads woven throughout the album, and the lyrics are repeated at the end of the final song. I love bookends. I also love the texture made by doubling the synth and piano, note for note. The next song, ‘Hasn’t It Always,’ was born from the same riff that ends ‘Get To Live.’ Rather than try to hide that musical overlap, I made it the next song in the sequence.”
2) “Hasn’t It Always”
“The Patreon version of this song uses piano, synth, bass and drum machine. It’s a kind of downtempo, easy-listening number. I hadn’t yet met or worked with Maria Grigoryeva, the string arranger/performer for this album. I sent her the Patreon version of this song and asked her to replicate the bass part with her cello and the synth parts with high strings. She added her own—better—decisions and sent back a demo of the chamber pop this song was to become.”
3) “Timebomb”
“Songwriting about songwriting … oh no! When I got home from Sunset Rubdown’s reunion tour in 2023, I wrote a song called ‘Listening To Music In Cars’ as a kind of homage to the undertaking. We were a band again. We were friends again. We did it. The song was about re-bonding through the shared experience of listening to music while on the road. But that song was—and is—not great. It’s never left the Patreon platform. In late 2024, emotions and interpersonal relationships spiraled downward again within Sunset Rubdown … probably the hardest tour of my life. When I got home from that one, I tried to revisit ‘Listening To Music In Cars’ as a way to maybe explore what had happened. Maybe I could rewrite it somehow, learn something new, paint a fuller picture. It wasn’t to be. That song is just a shitty snapshot of a nice moment, and that’s it. What I ended up writing instead, back in late 2024, was ‘Timebomb.’”
4) “Real Long Headlock”
“To say I’ve ever had political fatigue implies that I did—or that I know something about politics. I didn’t. I don’t. I went to some rallies and reposted, of course. I made phone calls, wrote emails and donated money. And, sure, there was a mild despair over how none of that seemed to matter. Nothing changed. But the fatigue wasn’t so much from that near-hopelessness as it was from tracking everything online. Some people can do this and stay in one piece. Not me. I became more fractured than normal, and my family needs me as whole as possible. I had to step back and rebalance.”
5) “Secret Bridge”
“Thematically a kind of continuation from the last song—but leaning more toward family than politics … making sense of the quiet life, how I got here, where I’m going. It’s a nod to small, peaceful lives—old-guy stuff. This is the first appearance of Jordan Koop on the album. His guitar melodies contribute greatly to the listenability of this song. They bring it somewhere less gloomy and more poppy and upbeat, highlighting the hopeful elements in the lyrics. I love collaborating with Koop.”
6) “Berserker Mode”
“The kinetic, repetitive riff is satisfying to play, and I think the lyrics—about watching a friend (or yourself?) fall into the same self-made pitfalls over and over again in life—are all right. I wasn’t sure about adding this song to the album just because of how short and simple it is. It wasn’t until Em (Elbow Kiss) added their vocal harmonies that I knew the song was a keeper. They really brought the song to life for me. The 11th-hour addition of percussion didn’t hurt either. I can’t wait to do this one on tour.”
7) “List Of Names”
“I like the piano parts here. They took a long time to evolve into their final form, and that’s sometimes a good thing. Grigoryeva’s string arrangement is fantastic, harmonically adding a lot. I think the wordplay within the lyrics is all right. But the subject matter? Well, it’s trivial. But I needed to get some shit off my chest, apparently. And it worked. I’ll never write about that subject again.”
8) “Listening To Music In Cars 2.5 (All The Tired Horses)”
“In 2025, I finally closed the loop on the whole Sunset Rubdown story I mentioned above by writing this song. It borrows from that band in a very intentional and purposeful way. But lyrically, it’s a completely different song—basically an explanation of how and why it came to exist, including the Sunset Rubdown tour memories—both good and bad—and the earlier versions of the song. The song sings about itself. I kept the Bob Dylan lines at the end, explaining why they’re there earlier in the song. It’s all a bit meta in a way that I fully admit will be confusing for the casual listener.”
9) “Pinecone King”
“I probably have less of an idea of what this song is about than any other on the album. Because I post new songs almost every month on Patreon, they’ve become sort of like monthly journal entries for me. In the month this was written, it seems I was more confused than usual about who I am—or whom I’m supposed to be. Elbow Kiss’ vocals are so haunting in this one. I love the way their voice weaves in and around my own. It brings the arrangement to a more interesting place.”
10) “Souvenirs”
“The closest thing on the album to a traditional love song. The singer reflects on what a shell of a person they’d be without their partner in life. Two of the album’s collaborators come together here, whereas they’re always isolated before now on the album. Having Elbow Kiss on additional vocals and Koop with his guitar stylings in the same space was partly why I chose this one as a closer. The long outro is the other reason. The lyrics from the album’s intro (‘You get to live’) are repeated here for balance, but also tweaked to, ‘We get to live’—as though it’s a revelation from hearing the whole album played out.”
See Spencer Krug live.