I Went and Got Messed Up Again

So I got the new Spoon record, and I’m sorta meh on it.

As usual it sounds amazing. Probably the best drum sound they’ve ever achieved. But the songs aren’t there. Not the way they were for the last two records.

Spoon rightfully gets a lot of credit for their attention to sonic detail and their Yo La Tengo-like unwillingness to make the same record twice. The Merge-era Spoon records, in particular, always have few songs or set pieces that reveal their tactical approach to sound for that record (e.g., the bells and horns on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, the bare-knuckled pianos on Kill the Moonlight). For Transference it’s the way Spoon breaks the sustain on their 4th wall. Instruments entering the room like Kramer. Cutting songs off mid-chorus and mid-word. The Pitchfork review thought this was swell:

They’ve turned it all inside-out on Transference, subtly shifting the leading signifiers of Spoon-iness just so for a destabilizing effect. Their go-to trick for the first half of the album is to include bits of sound that abruptly cut off, usually sung phrases that drop entirely out of the mix mid-syllable. This may be aggravating for some listeners, but this counterintuitive move makes sense in context, indicating distraction and tongue-tied indecision. This is a perfect example of the group’s genius as a studio band: They get very cerebral in arranging their material, but every clever move is entirely in the service of maximizing physical impact and gut-level response. These are not simply recordings of a top-notch rock quartet playing in a room; this is art built to hit precise emotional marks with an impressive balance of off-the-cuff improvisation and rigid discipline.

And yeah, Spoon does a lot on this record to draw your attention into the mix; to let you see them pretend at sewing up the seams. Since this is nominally their first self-produced record, I guess that’s okay. But it’s not their first time around the block. Britt Daniel and drummer Jim Eno are experienced knob twiddlers. So the faux first production credit doesn’t fully explain the self-conscious three-day beard that’s on display here. I certainly don’t have to be convinced the band knows how to edit and present their sound. Unfortunately, there’s not much else to grab your attention once you’ve congratulated them—again—on their ability to “use the studio as an instrument.”

I agree with the thrust of this Austin Chronicle review:

While even the band’s most marketable material has been spiked with acute studio experimentation – the background chatter and double-tracked vocals in "Don’t You Evah" for example – left to their own devices, those details dominate the band’s seventh album, style consistently disguising a lack of structure and self-sustaining songs, which separates the LP from its most obvious comparison point, 1998′s A Series of Sneaks. "Is Love Forever?" bears a classic Spoon stamp, Jim Eno’s percussive bounce locked with taut, staccato guitar and frontman Britt Daniel’s robotic echo-chamber vocals, but never builds beyond that. Likewise, opener "Before Destruction" gets lost in a demo stage, the peripheral sonic details unable to bring the bigger picture into focus. Five-minute "The Mystery Zone" could pass for an extended DFA remix, slowly developing behind a spacious, swaggering bassline and space-needle guitar break – ghosts lingering in its keyboard accents – but the effect gets negated by a truncated ending.

Basically, very little of the “cerebral” craftsmanship is done in the service of Good Songs. I’ve not been this disappointed with a set of Spoon songs since Kill the Moonlight. If I were assembling a greatest hits for this band, I’d struggle to pull something from this record. “Got Nuffin” and “Written in Reverse” have been the showcase songs so far, but neither would manage to bump “My Little Japanese Cigarette Case”, which is is probably the 6th or 7th best song on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.

You know what, I’d probably fail if I tried to tell you exactly what’s so wrong with this record. Instead, I’m doing to do something much more fun (for me). I’m going to rank my favorite spoon recordings from worst place to first place. That will, at least, give you an idea where I’m coming from. Then you can decide how much water my ears hold for you.

	My favorite album cover of theirs. I never open it. It’s not on my PC. Not one single song I’d put on a mix-tape for a pal. Their worst record. But it’s also the least adorned of their Merge classics. I wonder what the rest of their songs would sound like with Moonlight’s ascetic production. I know lots of people who swear by it. I don’t hear it.
	They worked hard on everything but the songwriting. It might be their best sounding record, so maybe you could pose a similar question for the studio pros: what would the rest of their catalog sound like if they could remake it knowing what they know now?
	Like Radiohead’s first record, Telephono is notable because it bears so little resemblance to the band we hear now. But also like Pablo Honey, this first Spoon record is packed full of obvious hooks that attached themselves to youthful memories of mine. I smoked so many cigarettes to this record. “Nefarious” is the best 80s hit of the 90s.
	This is a favorite for many pals of mine, but it’s always suffered for me. Yes, “Car Radio” is awesome. So is “Metal Detektor.” And “Advance Cassette” sounds like a harbinger of the Merge era. But it’s always been difficult for me to escape one simple fact: Nothing here is even close to anything on Soft Effects. Since it was the first thing I heard following that seminal EP, I’ve never gotten over the disappointment. They regressed.
	I almost want to rank this one higher. But that’s just nostalgia. When I first heard it, I was so grateful that the whole Elektra thing hadn’t killed the band. And hearing “Everything Hits at Once” for the first time colored the entire experience for me…it’s the best song in their Merge catalog and it defines the rest of the record. The reality, though, is that half is filler and it’s heavily frontloaded. From “Everything” to “Anything” is superb. After that, only the closer, “Chicago at Night”, still holds up for me.
	I expect disagreement on these next two selections, but the early fans I know tend to heavily overrate the past and underrate the late-era stuff. With Spoon that’s a mistake, because most of Daniel’s best songwriting is on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and, especially, Gimme Fiction. This is the weaker of those two records, but it’s the more transparently entertaining. If I were introducing someone to Spoon, this is the record I’d give them. For any other band it would be a Greatest Hits collection by itself: ”Sometimes I think that I’ll find a love / One that’s gonna change my heart / I’ll find it in commercial appeal / And then this heartache’ll get chased away”
	This record is actually a bit less consistent than Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, but only slightly so. The balance is made up because probably  4 or 5 of Spoon’s ten best songs are on this record. As the title explicitly indicates, Daniel is able augment his band’s tilt toward intricate studio adventurism with a strong focus on narrative and character. What’s truly kick-ass is that compelling story fragments emerge despite Daniel’s continued reliance on every indie rock singer’s best friend—cryptic lyrics. On Gimme Fiction, Spoon’s sonic dorkery, swank hooks, and memorable obscurantism all hit you at the same time with the same force. And thanks to “I Turn My Camera On”, I’m betting no other Spoon record will ever make the band as much money.
	My least favorite album cover of theirs. And it’s only an EP. And I know what I said about about overrating the past. And it’s especially easy to overrate the first record you ever heard from a band. But with those caveats, nothing kills me like Soft Effects. The five core songs (not counting the two Telephono tracks included on my version) sound tossed-off, half-assed. These are experiments to which they would never return. But Series of Sneaks notwithstanding, this was the moment they reached—and surpassed—the limits of their minimalist trio set-up. The Merge records are great. But this was another band. A better band.

Finally, I should mention that none of these records contain my favorite Spoon song. Like all asshole completists, my princess is in another castle: “I Could Be Underground” from the 30-gallon tank EP, which is the only other Spoon EP that’s a must-own.