Album Reviews

Spoon’s been at it for more than a decade (their first major label CD, the outstanding A Series of Sneaks) was issued by Elektra in 1998, after which the label promptly dropped them), yet after all of this time, when they played New York’s Roseland recently, front man Britt Daniel announced that this relatively small former dance hall, with a capacity of around 3500 (standing room only) was the largest headlining concert the band had played.

That’s pathetic given how great this band is both on record and now that I’ve finally seen them in person, in concert. Front man Daniel grew up in Texas, surrounded by Beatles, Stones and other ‘60s music and a guitar collection owned by his neurologist father. You can hear it all on the Spoon records but while you’ll hear the influences and Daniel’s love of his dad’s record collection you won’t hear reactionary musical retreads.

Spoon hasn’t made a bad record and they are all easy to recommend. Older readers who have yet to discovered Spoon will be delighted by their music, which both validates the music of their teens, while driving it forward and attracting a new, young generation.

This latest Spoon album is more of a “holding pattern” that’s not as strong or as well-focused as some of the band’s previous efforts, though it does have some incredibly infectious tunes and shows glimpses of where the band might go moving forward, both musically and in terms of production techniques.

The album opens with the patented Spoon midtempo Lennon-like vamp on “Don’t Make Me a Target,” an ironic anti-terrorism song we all wish to sing but aside from the title, the lyrics drift into sweet insinuations less than literal such as “For nuclear dicks with their dialect drawls.” Could be Bush, could be Cheney, could be Osama!

The standouts are “You Got Yr Cherry Bomb,” which the oldsters will recognize as a Holland/Dozier/Holland rhythm and chord construct, complete with Xylophone (synth?) and backed by a rocking horn section that the band brought on stage at Roseland and promptly blew the house down. It’s downright infectious and is alone worth the price of admission.

There’s some filler and some rehashing on this relatively short album, but then there’s “Underdog,” (produced by Jon Brion) the song the band absolutely nailed with white-hot intensity on Saturday Night Live a while back. It’s another tune that won’t depart your cerebral cortex anytime soon after you first encounter it.

The sound is the usual Spoon clear cut production. These guys know how to produce a record that’s got weight, depth, height and dynamics, though this time out the sound is a bit flatter and thinner than before, which is too bad, and they've decided to play with reverb more than usual. Still compared to most of the squashed stuff out there it’s pretty good.

By all means see them live if you can but don’t expect to be blown away. Expect to be thoroughly entertained though. They don’t have the theatric or emotional powers to devastate, and that’s probably true of the albums as well, but they sure will have your body grooving! That said, the kids at Roseland were fucking zombies! It was shocking watching these guys laying down oozy, danceable rhythms and the crowd barely showing a twitch. Maybe it’s the video games and I couldn’t see the thumbs.

By the way: there's even a locked groove at the end of side two. These boys love their vinyl!

P.S.: you get a free MP3 download with the vinyl and it gets you a bonus remix album that fans will probably enjoy.