Every year there is a band that inexplicably rockets out from the depths of obscurity and ends up on all the year-end lists after riding months of breathless critics’ praise. Though the music industry is now so fractured that these groups often don’t push themselves into the mainstream, they still become an annoyance to people like the people who run this site who devote time and energy to seeking out new music. It may be a matter of only switching the station the four times the band is actually played on the radio, but there still is an irritation when you see the countless plaudits for a group that could best be called “boring”. This year, that group is Future Islands.
We alluded a bit to our issues with the band in our review of Spoon’s show last week at the Crystal Ballroom where Future Islands was one of two openers, but we let our criticisms remain vague so as not to consume too much time railing against a weaker part of the night in favor of letting Spoon’s fantastic performance remain the focus of the review. Our problems with the band began not with their performance on Wednesday, but way back in the spring when their performance on Letterman had a lot of music journalists and fans buzzing all over social media. Being the diligent researchers and devotees of music that we are, we checked out their performance of “Seasons (Waiting On You)” and were left utterly perplexed how a combination of a boring bassline, a basic disco beat, thin synths, and a comical vocal performance punctuated by comically theatrical dance moves could result in such universal praise. We checked out a few more songs from their album Singles on YouTube, and were left realizing that this same combination was present in all songs. We remained nonplussed by all the adulation.
Now, we would like to stress that our criticism is not meant to take away from anyone who genuinely enjoys the music of Future Islands–life is too short to rip on what other people enjoy. Our problem is with those who spend countless words trying to convince others that the band is “good” when it is nearly impossible to find something to truly recommend about their sound. My first reaction to the band’s style was we don’t need a post-ironic take on Roxy Music’s “More Than This”, we’re just fine with the original thank you very much. The band’s goal seems to take all of the artificial sheen that marked the worst of music from the 80’s, lay it over a never-deviating disco beat, take out all semblance of hooks or a worthwhile melody, and toss it behind a frontman with all the charisma of a guy who believes that karaoke on a Thursday night at the local dive bar is the highlight of anyone’s week. It adds up to a package that I don’t know whether to take seriously or mock, and I’m not sure if the band or critics know which one is the correct approach.
Though I occasionally tried over the next few months to give them multiple shots, I still had the same nagging criticisms each time. However, I still approached their opening set for Spoon with an opening mind; several journalists had raved about their live performance, and it felt like it would be unfair to the band to write them off without seeing them at their full potential. Instead, the show confirmed all my suspicions of the band’s talent, and then some.
Each song brought up the same pattern: a basic disco beat, basslines that went nowhere, and synths that were so airy that they forgot to provide chord structures or even suggestions of melody. Each song bled into the other, the formula never wavering. In one of those year-end reviews someone compared the bass to Peter Hook’s work with Joy Division, and I would hope Peter read that and got on a plane and smacked this critic in the face–it’s an insult to compare Hook’s innovative melodic and rhythmic contributions that were integral parts to the brilliance of Joy Division’s music to this guy plugging away at root notes at an eighth-note clip. People were looking to dance and get moving, but when it’s the same oom-cha straight beat for forty minutes it gets a little dull; it wouldn’t kill whatever it is that you’re going for to throw in a variation every couple of measures, pal. As for the keyboards, it’s hard to come up with a better suggestion than just “do something.”
The vocal performance, which most devotees point to as the band’s strength, was its own sort of awful. I can love and respect artist who put all their energy into delivering a show, but everything about Sam Herring’s actions made the entire affair seem like a “performance.” There was no semblance of genuine human emotion coming through in any of his vocals or dance moves, and every movement and inflection came across as painfully rehearsed. That is to say nothing about the deliberately weird affectations like the attempt at a human phaser effect by dipping into the lower register to deliver Cookie Monster-style vocals for an odd phrase here or there. It was unclear what the point of the entire enterprise was. I’d rather see Milosh the fresh-off-the-boat Eastern European immigrant deliver a passionate-but-fractured take on Styx’s “Come Sail Away.”
There was one moment in the show last week that proved the sheer disparity in talent between Future Islands and their fellow denizens of the Best Of lists, and that was when Spoon kicked into their hit “I Turn My Camera On.” Spoon was able to effortlessly switch gears, and the rigid stomp-funk of “Camera” not only got the audience dancing but was a seamless part of their set. The song has never felt like a genre exercise for Spoon (or a shameless stab at popular relevance), but a natural part of the band’s catalog, no matter how superficially different it may seem. Contrast that with Future Islands, who spent their entire set trying to cultivate a similar style, and not conveying a genuine emotion for a single second, or even a competent dance beat.
What may be most distressing is that one can easily see how in three years that Future Islands will go from critic’s darling to a passe joke. The most apt comparison may be Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, but as we have argued elsewhere on this site, even at their most seemingly simplistic there was genuine artistic merit to what CYHSY produced. At the very minimum, they at least knew how to provide variation to their basic drum beat.
After taking a five year break from visiting Portland, Spoon returned last night for their second show in less than six months, but even with the quick turnaround the fans last night were excited to see the one-time locals once again. Breaking free from the tentativeness of their previous festival-headlining slot at MusicFestNW, the band seemed energized to bring their show back to a more intimate venue with a devoted audience. It makes one wish that Spoon would stop by every month of the year.
Hopefully we won’t have to use this photo for the next concert as well.
It was clear almost immediately that the time spent touring in support of their excellent new album They Want My Soul was well-spent, as the band sounded crisper and more spirited than they did at their show this past summer. Even during moments when it seemed like not everyone was in sync, there was still a feeling of calm that they would let any temporary road bumps slide and they could line up again soon enough. This palpable sense of trust in each other allowed the band to flash some showier stage tricks (like Britt Daniel pulling a Johnny Cash and aiming his guitar as a gun to add an exclamation point to some of his licks) or recover quickly from quick fuckups (like Britt dropping the mic in “The Way We Get By”).
At this point it is nearly impossible for Spoon to come up with a bad setlist, considering they’ve released six stellar albums in a row, and as a result the band can choose freely from a deep catalog. Though it was a bit disappointing for me personally to have Girls Can Tell shut out, that was balanced out by hearing hidden gems like “They Never Got You” from Gimme Fiction and “My Little Japanese Cigarette Case”. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga made up the lion’s share of the set, with a punched-up and dramatic version of “The Ghost Of You Lingers” being a standout of the early part of the set. Driving numbers like “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” and “Don’t Make Me A Target” got the crowd bouncing along, with more than a few totally cutting loose during main set closer “Got Nuffin'”.
Britt takes stock of the audience
The encore kicked off with the fantastic “Black Like Me”, though it was a bit disappointing to have the crowd not respond en masse with the “yeah”s and “oh yeah”s. I suspected that the cover that the band played was from The Cramps, and I was proud to see that my suspicions were confirmed as they indeed played their song “My TV Set” (while I try to be as knowledgeable as possible, my expertise is not perfect, and I only have a rudimentary knowledge of the band). Spoon finished the night with “a song that I wrote in Southeast”, and the audience was overjoyed to hear that the ebullient “The Underdog” was a local product. We can only hope that Britt comes back for more inspiration soon.
A Giant Dog were the first openers, and they were an energetic group that kept spirits high; it was nice to hear Britt plug their other show that night at Dante’s, noting though that if you saw him there to not talk to him because he wanted to truly take in their music. Future Islands, despite all the accolades they’ve received so far, did little to impress despite my intention to approach them with an open mind; instead, I feel as if it may be necessary to note specifically what it is that bothers me about their sound, but I don’t want to take away any more from the main act. Spoon delivered a superb show, and it’s wonderful to see their career continue to thrive.
News and new videos as you adjust to the terrifying new era of reverting back from daylight savings…
The Decemberists have announced that they will release a new album early next year, entitled What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World. And so we don’t come away with only this announcement, the band also provided us with a new song, “Make You Better”, complete with a “visualizer” video.
Prince performed on Saturday Night Live this past weekend, eschewing the normal two song/~four minute blocks for one eight-minute mega-jam. It was a memorable performance, and not just for Prince’s third-eye sunglasses or his backing 3rdEyeGirl group. At the very least, we learned that Prince has spent some time listening to Pantera.
Cymbals Eat Guitars recently uploaded the music video for “Warning”, off their excellent new album LOSE, featuring a very young band (Crosshair) playing the part of CEG. If you never got the chance to pick up their stellar debut Why There Are Mountains, wait another week for the reissue.
Spoon helped end The Daily Show’s run in Austin in style, playing multiple tracks off their latest excellent album, They Want My Soul. We would embed the videos here, but Comedy Central uses a screwy system, so either go to The Daily Show website or find all three performances on Pitchfork, since they did the legwork to get the correct plug-in.
Nirvana fans may be intrigued by the recent discovery of a “sound collage” that Kurt Cobain created, illustrating more of a connection with a band like The Olivia Tremor Control than one would have suspected. Note: this sounds nothing like Nirvana, but have fun with it anyway. Update:An interview with Cobain’s girlfriend at the time, Tracy Marander, sheds some light on the recording, including that there are two versions of “Montage of Heck” and that Nirvana diehards had known of this for years, and in fact a copy had been circulating for some time.
Wilco had some fun on The Tonight Show last week, though not all the footage was aired during the show. Check out this acoustic version of the classic Yankee Hotel Foxtrot track “I’m the Man That Loves You”.
Some #longreads and a handful of other assorted goodies for your weekend…
We always appreciate it when people write articles about Teenage Fanclub, especially those pieces which talk about how underrated the group and their special brand of power-pop was. The AV Club urges readers to listen to Songs From Northern Britain in particular, and hopefully that inspires people to pick up the rest of their fantastic catalog.
Noisey interviews Interpol as they return to New York in support of El Pintor, and gets the band to open up a bit about the departure of Carlos as well as the band’s new mindset. It’s definitely worth reading if you’re a fan.
There’s a cool video making the rounds called “100 Bass Riffs: A Brief History of Groove on Bass and Drums”. It’s a great way to explore the development of music in the last fifty years, and the musicians will impress you with not only their pure skills, but their memory and stamina as well.
New music and videos for your recovery from the Labor Day Weekend…
Peter Matthew Bauer released the video for “You Are The Chapel”, the majestic closer to his stellar debut album. It’s a mix of both performance and lyric video, with a slight twist on the latter as you’ll see:
Spoon did a “Secret Show” for MySpace, and the site has posted their performance of “The Rent I Pay”. The direct link has been pretty spotty, so if necessary, check out the band’s Facebook page for an alternate link; and if they upload more, we’ll be sure to send you over that way.
Those aren’t the only albums coming out next week; Better Than Ezra was one of the bands that I loved from my youth, and not only are they still kicking, they have a new release next week with All Together Now. Billboard is hosting a stream if you want to check it out.
Frontman for The Strokes Julian Casablancas is set to release another solo album called Tyranny in a couple of weeks, and just released “Human Sadness” as its first single, a rather unorthodox choice considering it’s an 11-minute song.
TV on the Radio provided more information for their new album today, announcing that Seeds will be released on November 18, and also provided a list of tour dates for the fall. Also, the band posted the first single “Happy Idiot”, complete with lyric video.
Portland celebrated MusicFestNW this past weekend, and it looked a little different than it had in past years. Instead of a colder, wetter version of SXSW (with a city more equipped to handle the traffic), we got a Northwest version of the current incarnation of Lollapalooza and other similar festivals. We didn’t have to buy tickets to multiple venues and plan across a whole week, but instead had a two-day festival in a specific part of the gorgeous Waterfront Park, soaking in that last bit of summer before the inevitable gloomy fall.
We decided to skip the first day since there were no acts that seemed worthy of shelling out the extra money for another day of tickets (with all apologies to Run the Jewels, for whom it would probably be worth to pay a full-day’s admission to see on their own). I’m going to avoid the opportunity to talk smack about bands for whom I don’t particularly care, because we here at Rust Is Just Right try to set ourselves apart by not indulging in condescending snark and instead promote what we enjoy. But in private, let’s just say there were a lot of good burns that were shared.
Portland’s Waterfront Park, on a non-MusicFest day.
Our plan on Sunday was to catch the lineup starting from The Antlers until the end, but thanks to several accidents on I-5 our ETA was delayed by about an hour. Luckily, we still caught the last few songs of The Antlers’ set, a circumstance which mimicked my previous limited encounter with their live show when they only performed a short showcase at SXSW. One would think that their delicate and fragile songs would not be ideal for a live show, especially in a large festival setting, but once again I came away extremely impressed with their performance. We were caught wandering around the backside of the cordoned-off grounds for “I Don’t Want Love” (mistaking beliving that there would be entrances on the bridge side), but we were still able to hear the devastating power of the song even filtered through the backstage equipment.
The Antlers: “Music Band Northeast, glad to play Music Fest Northwest.”
Once we finally settled in to the proper area, we heard a couple of songs from their latest album Familiars. I haven’t yet internalized the nuances of those songs, but I can assure you that they come off very well in a live setting. Perhaps the biggest surprise was their last song, “Putting The Dog To Sleep”. It’s a great closer on Burst Apart, but given the specific nature of the song, it wouldn’t appear to be the most natural way to end a set. The song was as cathartic as expected, but the band added an additional musical twist: first they began the natural breakdown of the song, taking pains to stretch out the chord progression while keeping the resolution slightly out of reach, but then building the song back up with an extended instrumental section that dazzled the crowd.
You know this was from early in the set because Damian Abraham’s shirt is still on.
We then made our way to the other end of the park, where Fucked Up was set to perform next–a transition that ranks among the most jarring ever scheduled at a music festival. Here is a great opportunity for praising the new setup of the festival, as this allowed minimal time wasted between different acts as they had the necessary amount of time to setup without holding the crowd hostage, and the distance between the two sets was both short enough for the walk to not be burdensome while long enough so that there was not any bleedthrough between the two stages. Someone deserves some extra kudos for that solid planning.
We’ve shown our love before with our glowing review of Glass Boys, but even we were taken aback at just how awesome Fucked Up’s set was at MusicFest. I’m willing to claim that their hour-long set alone was worth the price of admission for the full day’s lineup. There’s really nothing quite like seeing the giant hulking mass of positive energy that is Damian Abraham working his way through the crowd, giving hugs to folks passing by, climbing on top of the fence to sing out to the people on the river, and high-fiving a baby as the band ferociously kept up and played in lockstep. Seriously, Pink Eyes high-fived a baby–that immediately became an all-time top-five concert moment for me personally.
Pink Eyes, now sans shirt.
I believe most of the set was from Glass Boys and David Comes To Life, though I will admit that sometimes it can be difficult to tell certain songs apart. At least none of my personal favorites from The Chemistry of Common Life came up, though the rarity “I Hate Summer” made a welcome appearance, with a thoughtful introduction from Abraham on how one shouldn’t listen to personal attacks from others who are merely trying to shame people for no good reason. He also at other times mentioned the healthful benefits of weed and the terrible events occurring in Ferguson, MO, with each speech receiving thunderous applause. The band was tight, as I mentioned, but also could have benefited from an extra volume boost to help compete with Abraham’s sharp bellow, and also to help distinguish between the various components of their three-guitar attack. Unfortunately, it seemed that the raucous set eventually drove the crowd away, as it seemed after their initial welcome that many people grew tired of listening to an hour of hardcore, and eventually made their way back to the other end of the park. Then again, perhaps it was the heat finally getting to a few people, and the need to stock up on food. I hope it was the latter, because Fucked Up deserved a new wave of fans after that performance.
A glimpse of the color of tUnE-yArDs
We had previously seen tUnE-yArDs when they opened up for The National only a few months ago, and in between it seems the set morphed from less a capella and looped percussion to more synths and live percussion. That’s not to say that the music was any more conventional–there is still a dominant left-of-center sensibility. For those who are unfamiiliar, the music of tUnE-yArDs is filled with complicated rhythms and tribal influences with world music type lyrics. In other words, at many points through the set I thought I was living through a real-life Portlandia sketch. Despite this vague feeling of uneasiness, I still really enjoyed the tUnE-yArDs set, as did the hundreds of other people that packed the listening area.
I ate a lamb gyros.
We ate dinner during HAIM. Mine was delicious.
I save my worst photography for last.
Spoon closed out the festival with a fantastic headlining performance, with a setlist that went deep into their catalog. You may have noticed that we here at this site love the band quite a bit, and let’s just say that we loved every minute of their show. Britt Daniel, former Portland resident (who gave a shoutout to SE during “Black Like Me”), remarked that it had been a long time since their last show in the city, back when they performed at the Crystal Ballroom in 2009; as an attendee of that concert, I could only shout out “too long!”
Just to show that the festivities extended into the night.
In their live show, Spoon manages to perfectly balance between precision and spontaneity, as the band can maintain both a perfect verisimilitude of their albums and allow for individual players to freak out and revel in the moment. The band mixed in a healthy amount of their stellar new album They Want My Soul, and even some of the more experimental tracks like “Outlier” and “Inside Out” sounded perfectly at home within the set. The crowd roared when they heard old favorites like “Small Stakes” and “I Turn My Camera On”, but saved their most appreciative response for the hits from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga like “Don’t You Evah” and “The Underdog”. Personally, I was glad to finally hear some of Transference live, including an extremely passionate performance of “Got Nuffin'”, and to witness at least one Girls Can Tell song, the sublime “Anything You Want”. The only odd part was that besides Britt there seemed to be several band members that wanted to get out of the show in a hurry–the band ended up doing two encores, which seemed to be partly the result of some poor time budgeting. It may have been the result of getting used to one-hour slots on various festivals and not properly adjusting to a headlining 90-minute slot, but from a distance I could see the look on some of the faces of the band members that they were hoping to cut things shot. Despite this, Spoon more than justified taking the top spot on the bill; I’m just hoping for a proper show at some point from these guys in the near future.
Slate has an article that discusses the neuroscience behind people’s natural inclination to adore the songs of their youth, despite the fact that objectively they realize the songs are not very good. This inspired me to take a look through my collection to see if there was anything that I should be ashamed of, and I really didn’t come up with anything. But I’m going to post this video of N.E.R.D.’s “Rock Star”, because how often will I have the chance? I wonder what Pharrell ever did after this…
We might as well finish things off this week with our Band of the Week, Spoon. You would think that after all this time spent carefully analyzing the band’s albums and career over the past few days that we had covered everything, and to tell the truth, you would be partially correct: we did mention this particular moment on Tuesday. But indulge us and allow us to examine a particular moment of brilliance from the band, the spastic guitar solo from “The Beast and Dragon, Adored”.
[For listening purposes, the solo occurs at around the three minute mark]
To the untrained ear, the guitar solo in this song is reminiscent of what many people say when confronted with modern art–“My kid could paint that.” It’s true that on a superficial level the guitar solo sounds like a rather amateurish effort–similar to our previous Feats of Strength, in which we paid tribute to “shitty drumming”, but not quite. It sounds like the kind of solo that a novice would attempt when he/she gets tired of practicing scales and wants to just rock out for a few seconds and unleash that rawk-n-roll spirit. In other words, it sounds a lot like aural hot garbage.
In reality, it takes a lot of skill to sound that “bad”. Take it from a musician who’s played guitar for dozens of years and is still more comfortable with writing a traditional fretboard-burner than a freakout like this one. It may sound like a mess of random notes, but that’s not really accurate; the exact notes were not planned out, but the general plan was determined well in advance. The use of dissonant tones and a chromatic scale were pre-planned, and Britt’s rhythm is spot-on, speeding up and repeating notes as necessary. It is the definition of “controlled chaos”.
The solo also needs to be considered within the context of both the song and of Spoon’s music in general. The band has a reputation for absolute precision, with each part carefully constructed to fit within the perfect space in the music. Even on their more energetic and rocking songs, the band never loses control of the music, and they always maintain a tight feel. This is present in the song as well–aside from the lead guitar, every instrument is locked into place, and played at a measured and precise tempo. The lead guitar then comes in and shocks the listener, disturbing the previously imagined order. If another band had attempted the same trick, it wouldn’t have the same resonance or power because this moment goes against everything we’ve expected from Spoon. It makes for an incredibly compelling live performance as well, as this is one of the few moments where the audience sees Britt completely lose himself to the music as he falls to the floor to wring out all the emotion possible from the solo. At this point, the audience now understands that when they believe, they call it rock’n’roll.
We’ll just get this out of the way early: They Want My Soul is a fantastic album, and is a worthy addition to the Spoon canon. Once again, the band pulls off the incredibly difficult trick of writing a record that is true to their song, without sounding as if they’re recycling the same old ideas. Each track that reminds the listener of an older Spoon song doesn’t come off as a retread but instead forges new territory, and then the other songs finds Spoon branching off into new and exciting territories while still maintaining their identity for articulate, incisive music.
Each Spoon album reveals itself over time to have certain musical themes–Girls Can Tell focused on quiet, somber reflections, Kill The Moonlight found an edge through its use of piano, Gimme Fiction pulled back with its use of guitar, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga was straight pop music, and Transference deconstructed pop music. If I were to pinpoint a musical theme with They Want My Soul, it’d be something along the lines of seeking to revive one’s inner spirit. It seems self-evident if one looks at the album title itself, and the fact that for the first time in their career have a song and album share the same title seems to underline this. The song itself brings to mind a similar sentiment expressed in Wilco’s classic “Theologians”, but done this time with a bit more aggression and rebelliousness–not just in the lyrics, but in the attack of the guitars. There similar strains of this sentiment throughout, such as in the swagger of a song like “Rainy Taxi”, or in the defiance of “Inside Out”, with its aversion to “holy rollers”.
Spoon even is able to accomplish something that most rock bands at the turn of the century could only hope to pull off, and that’s to incorporate dance and electronic elements without coming off as gimmicky. “Outlier” is what Better Than Ezra was trying to accomplish with their album How Does Your Garden Grow?(and that’s coming from a rare fan of that album), in that the electronic percussion and dance beat seem to be an organic part of the song, and the processed guitars and keyboards actually enhance the song by providing both neat-sounding noises and actual melodies. “New York Kiss”, a collaboration with Semisonic’s former leader Dan Wilson (and the writer who helped Adele into a sensation, most notably with “Someone Like You”; a collaboration that’s hardly been mentioned in most reviews for the record) is an even deeper foray into dance territory, and is an irresistible pleasure to boot. My only issue is that I can’t think of the specific early-2000’s rock act that it reminds me of, but that in and of itself does not detract from the joy that naturally comes through when bouncing around to its beat.
Considering those two songs, it then becomes extremely irritating when you find critics complain that TWMS sounds like a typical Spoon record; go back and listen to those two songs, and then remind me again where Spoon delved into those styles previously. And these are people that are actually paid to write about music and presumably have ears. That said, when Spoon goes into their wheelhouse, they can still pack a punch. There’s their usual excellent cover, this time a version of Ann-Margret’s“I Just Don’t Understand”, where the band once again adopts that smokey and dark jazzy swing that they do so well, as well as their own brilliant original “Do You”. I’m glad that radio has switched over to this single instead of “The Rent I Pay” (a song where the previous criticism of repetition was more valid, but a song whose quality is strengthened when placed within the album as a whole than as a stand-alone track), since it’s hard to get enough of that deep groove and those ooh-ooh-ooh-oohs. Careful listens eventually reveal nifty little details, like the delicate layering of subtle background synth parts or the parabolic nature of the ooh-ooh parts, all while maintaining an infectious melody throughout.
That pretty much encapsulates the album as a whole as well–it’s been playing constantly in my car, on my stereo, and on my iPod since its release, and like all the Spoon albums before it, it’s unlikely to wear out its welcome anytime soon.
In Part 1 of our Spoon feature last week, we went over the elements that make up the Spoon “sound” as well as their early work. In Part 2, we’re closely examining Spoon’s brilliant stretch of work from Girls Can Tell to Transference, making sure to highlight key tracks and themes.
Kicking off one of the most impressive hot streaks in rock history, Girls Can Tell is an artistic triumph that remains one of the greatest records released since the beginning of this century. It’s an album that is truly timeless–it sounds as fresh today as it did back in 2001, and has a classic sensibility that would have fit into the music scene at any point in the past 30 years, but would not have a “dated” quality that would make it sound like a product of a particular era. Its themes and sensibilities make it the perfect late night album, as the songs explore and evoke feelings of quiet contemplation and reminiscences tinged with slight regret; it’s nostalgic without being overbearingly so, a quality that is rare to find these days.
The album also marked a stylistic shift into the now classic Spoon sound, as the band brought in pianos and keyboards while placing the guitar more in the background. This change is clear from the classic opener, “Everything Hits At Once”, which begins with a light bouncy keyboard figure with the guitar used sparingly to provide accents to melodic ideas. The memorable first lines set the tone for the album: “Don’t say a word–the last one’s still stinging.” The directness of that command is a jarring emotional cut for the listener, and exposes feelings of not just anger from the narrator but vulnerability as well. While seemingly a traditional tale of moving on from an unpleasant breakup, the words take on a second meaning when considered against the backdrop of the band’s release from their record label prior to the recording of this album. Though you can sense the bitterness throughout, there is still some hope, as Britt repeats the lines “I can still change my mind tonight.”
Girls Can Tell is filled with perfect segues, including how “Everything Hits at Once” merges beautifully into “Believing is Art”. The song modifies some of the melodic figures of the previous one by adding a bit more jagged guitar as well as a quicker beat, two elements that help set up songs later in the album. “Lines in the Suit” and “The Fitted Shirt” form another inspired combination, both thematically (in obvious and not-obvious ways) and musically. “Lines” alternates between a bouncy verse and a disheartening chorus, and again works as a commentary on their response to the pitfalls of the music business, with the resulting feelings of being young yet washed up (there’s a direct reference to their early work with the lines “I’m listening to ‘Mountain To Sound’ [from the Soft Effects EP]and the way it’s panned is cool”). However, it’s the powerful vignette that Britt depicts in the bridge, where he introduces a previously unmentioned character, that is most memorable:
“The human resource clerk has two cigarettes and back to work; she eats right but hurts. And she says it could’ve been good by now–it could’ve been more than a wage. How come she feels so washed up at such a tender age now? It could’ve been easier.”
The listener can instantly form a mental picture of this woman and immediately grasp at her inner emotional turmoil, all in the span of a couple of lines, proving that Britt Daniel has skills that most songwriters only wish they could have. With “The Fitted Shirt”, Spoon flips the imagery, with the fancy clothing no longer being a target of ire but instead a totem of a warmly remembered past with his father. Musically, the repetitive guitar figure in the verse does a great job of mirroring the drudgery of the everyday rat-race, and the descending line in the chorus helps emphasize the feelings of nostalgia. Lyrically, the band capably manages to romanticize the past without sounding like bitter/naive old men, and somehow make the act of wearing an old fitted shirt an act of rebellion–a sentiment matched by the increased fury of the music.
The album ends with another excellent pairing, with the instrumental “This Book Is A Movie” providing an excellent introduction to the closer “Chicago At Night”. It helps settle the listener after the (relatively) raucous “Take the Fifth”, and with the help of a few deftly placed mysterious guitar chords helps set the mood for the aforementioned enigmatic track. “Chicago At Night” helps capture the feelings of alienation lurking throughout the album, with its constant references to a wall and its repeated mantra of “Everybody’s at disadvantage speaking with their second language.” It’s almost sinister, and by any objective evaluation should be considered to be a downer of an ending, but somehow Spoon makes the listener comfortable with its ambiguity, and satisfied with the album’s conclusion.
And to think, I didn’t even get the chance to mention “Me and the Bean”, a personal favorite and a song that’s so great that most people don’t even realize it’s a cover, since it sounds in many ways like a typical Spoon track. Even the cover is chosen with great care, as it also explores looking back through the past through the eyes of a partnership between an older man and younger woman. The initial dismissal by the former turns into acceptance of the importance of the latter, first as a symbiotic relationship (“I’ll bring you cover when you’re cold; you’ll bring me youth when I grow old”) and then total dependence (“I am your shadow in the dark; I have your blood inside my heart”); with three short verses (and no real chorus, besides some oh-o-o’s), we get the entire relationship between two people over a lifetime.
Kill The Moonlight followed the template established in Girls Can Tell, but cleaned up the production a bit and added a bit of an edge to most of the songs. Tempos picked up on several songs, and even on some of the softer tracks the band approached their instruments with a bit more ferocity. Piano/keys began to take an even more dominant role in the music, as evidenced by the opener “Small Stakes” which focuses on different variations of a playful organ riff (save for a tambourine), reserving the entrance of a chaotic drumset for the end. “The Way We Get By” is probably the song that most people know from the album, which again uses the piano as its driving force, this time opting for a jazzier/swingier vibe as Britt spins tales of misfits growing up tying various references to Stooges songs (“Shake Appeal”, “Some Weird Sin”, and “Down on the Street”, for the record) to certain rites of passages.
The band also begins to show their eye for experimentation, like with the studio-processed percussion of “Paper Tiger” and “Stay Don’t Go”, or the various production tricks of “Back to the Life”. Spoon manages to make these oddball touches sound almost organic, and never like mere gimmickry, and they’re able to fit right alongside more classic sounding songs like “Someone Something” or “All The Pretty Girls Go To The City”. The true heart of the album may be in the raging “Jonathon Fisk”, whose emphasis on a driving guitar call back to the earlier incarnation of the band, except for perhaps the horn lines that pop up at certain points in the track that indicate their newfound appreciation for jazzier influences. And just as they did before, Spoon ends the album with an excellent ballad, “Vittorio E.”, a song that to the listener provides a fitting resolution to the album, with its delicate acoustic guitar (mirrored by piano) and looping melodies, even as it ends with the repeated line of “It goes on.”
My first introduction to Spoon was with their next album Gimme Fiction and its unconventional lead single “I Turn My Camera On.” I was working in radio at the time, and I remember being utterly bewildered when I heard it for the first time, wondering to myself how it could be these guys that I had heard so much about from music critics. But I quickly came to appreciate the charms of Britt’s falsetto and marvel how the band could make a song with such an insistent straight beat sound so funky. I made sure to quickly grab a copy of the rest of the album, and it soon became a favorite of mine.
The opener “The Beast and Dragon, Adored” gave a clue that Spoon was now interested in deconstructing a lot of the basic elements of rock and putting them back together in an unconventional manner. When listening to the song, the structure seems relatively normal, but when you learn the music you realize that the different verse and chorus figures never follow the same pattern, and instead add and drop chord progressions at random. It gives the whole song a disorienting feel that would be otherwise impossible to determine. The melodies themselves are great at building up a mysterious, foreboding air, and the band writes great lyrics that give an almost-mythic sense to the music. The line “When you don’t feel it, it shows, they tear out your soul–And when you believe they call it rock and roll” is one of my all-time favorites and gives the sense that Spoon is fighting for the future of rock music as we know it, and is a brilliant setup for Britt’s spastic guitar solo that is the very definition of controlled chaos. It may sound like random noise, but it takes serious musical skill to pull off something that dissonant and make it still fit the song.
Even with more conventional rockers like “Sister Jack”, Spoon tweaks the formula in subtle ways that help capture the listener’s attention. The chord progression elongates some of the time spent on certain chords (a technique that is more clearly heard in the last few iterations in the song), providing some added tension, and helping to underline the emotions of betrayal that are evident from the lyrics (“But I can’t relax with my knees on the ground and a stick in my back”). Then there is the absurdity of the title character, “Sister Jack”, which is never actually explained in the lyrics. The tweaking of gender identities is found elsewhere on the album, most notably in “The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine”. It took the video for me to realize the storyline that was hidden in plain view, but a subtle tweak between the first and third verses provides the plot twist: in the first verse, the role that M. Valentine wishes to play “gets to sword-fight the duke, he kidnaps the queen”, but in the third verse “he makes love to the duke, he sword-fights the queen.”
Musically, the band places less emphasis on keys, though “My Mathetmatical Mind” proves to be an exception to the rule as its jazzy piano drives the tune, and in many ways represents the quintessential Spoon track. In fact, there were a few times I heard commercials with backing music that imitated the song, surely the result of some ad executive demanding something Spoon-esque but unable to pay the licensing fee for the real deal. Instead, acoustic guitar takes a more prominent role in many songs, like the excellent “I Summon You” and “The Delicate Place”, though the band makes sure that each strum is heard cleanly and doesn’t bleed from one stroke to the next. It still sounds like “Spoon”.
Spoon would return with the tight and poppy Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, which is probably best-known for its ebullient single “The Underdog”, a song whose effervescent horns recall for many Billy Joel, and not in a punchline kind of way. It has an infectious bounce and great incisive lyrics that help propel its positive message, and if you listen to it when you wake up it’s a great way to start your day. Another standout track is the buoyant and irrepressible “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb”, whose driving beat and soulful beat lift up the spirits of the listener, but mask what is actually a downer of a song. The music sounds so joyful, but the lyrics are all about the end of a relationship; even the central conceit of the cherry bomb is a reference to this, as the mentions of blowing out the cherry bomb are surrounded by lines like “We lost it long ago”, ‘I watched you start that drive alone”, and “Get yourself to bed”. It’s the happiest song about a breakup you’ll probably ever hear
The five best songs from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (“Don’t Make Me A Target”; “Finer Feelings”; “Black Like Me”; and the two previously mentioned ones) rank up with the best that Spoon has ever done, but on the whole I always have difficulty recommending this album over any of their others. The issue is not that the other five songs are bad–they’re all quite good, aside from “Don’t You Evah” which I would appreciate much more if the local radio station had chosen any other song on the album but that one to drive into the ground–it’s just that the Fab Five are so much better, that it creates an imbalance that you don’t really find on their other albums.
“Don’t Make Me A Target” initially sounds like a remake of “The Beast and Dragon, Adored”, but the fact that the entire song revolves around variations of the same riff, played differently according to the emotional mood of the lyrics, instead of the unsettled progression as outlined above, makes it an entirely different animal. That said, the breakdown into the guitar solo is a great partner to the Gimme Fiction track, and both are highlights of any Spoon show. “Finer Feelings” is simply a perfect pop song, filled with memorable lines like “A hundred yard stare of a kiss–Lord, I know I’ll never miss it” and “I was part-time at the Tasty Prawn–that and moving furniture and cutting lawns”, as well as the ingenious wordplay of using the Memphis newspaper Commercial Appeal in the chorus. Musically, the bass does a great job of locking into a bouncing groove, the guitar does a great job of providing the right rhythm accents and then twisting it into the chorus melody, and the fun studio tricks of using different samples and incorporating the talkback in the studio between the room and the performance area provide a nice color to the song without overwhelming it. And the closer “Black Like Me” is a great lovelorn ballad, one that plays the cruel trick of seeming to be just about to explode when the song suddenly stops, but somehow it works. “All the weird kids up front, tell me what you know you want–someone to take care of tonight.”
Spoon then closed out the decade with Transference, and it was at this point that it seems that critics got tired of writing praise for a consistently brilliant band and began taking them for grand. I feel like I need to start a support group for fans of this underrated album–well, as underrated an album can be when it still maintains a rating of universal acclaim at 80 on Metacritic. In many ways, it’s almost a reaction to the easygoing nature of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, but there are gems that are ready to be found. Part of the allure is that there are so many subtly subversive tricks to the album that delight music obsessives; for instance, the band put the lead single and biggest rocker “Got Nuffin'” as the tenth track of an eleven track album. The band also indulges in some of the studio trickery that they had only previously dabbled in, incorporating more talkback in different songs as well as switching between demo instrumental tracks (the rougher sounding spots) and regular studio tracks. It gives the album a really great raw and stitched-together feel, and is an excellent rebuttal against their earlier meticulous production.
There are some truly great songs on Transference that should rank high on any Spoon fan’s list, like the energetic and spirited “Trouble Comes Running”. In many ways, its pop sensibilities would be perfect for Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, but there are subtle tweaks that make it a natural fit for Transference; there’s the mix between demo and studio guitar for one, but then there’s the general approach of keeping the guitars as thin as possible when the natural melodic pull of the song would push other artists to fatten it up as big as possible. “I Saw The Light” uses its initial 6/8 triplet feel to create some excellent tension, and Jim Eno deserves a great amount of credit by switching on a dime to a straight-ahead 6/4 time signature, and seemingly cutting the climax at its knees. The fact that the lyrics cut out as soon as this time change occurs should be a signal to the listener that this is the exact moment that the narrator “saw the light”. But the outro almost raises more questions than it answers, as the chords continues to follow a descending pattern, while the guitars and piano hit on odd beats, so the listener is left to wonder exactly what it is the narrator “saw”. The album also includes two of the finest ballads of the band’s career with the gorgeous “Out Go The Lights” and the delicate and touching “Goodnight Laura”, songs which unfortunately have seemed to have gone overlooked in the years since the album’s release.
Where does They Want My Soul stack up within this great run? We’ll have the full review tomorrow, but we’ll say this now: it is definitely a fitting companion.
Rust Is Just Right 