I first became aware of the Texas band Spoon when I heard the song “The Beast and the Dragon, Adored” on the radio close to a decade ago. (Exact date? Who knows, but the song is from the 2005 album Gimme Fiction, so we’ll leave it at “close to a decade.”)
The song is mesmerizing, a sinewy bit of rock ‘n’ roll that is not quite blues but plays around the edges. I downloaded the song — it remains my favorite by the band — but didn’t buy the album, — not, anyway, until the 2007 masterpiece Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga came out. I was hooked.
And yet, I’ve never felt comfortable describing the band. What is Spoon? Where does the band fit? It was experimental without sounding experimental, classic without sounding retro. Who is Spoon?
I think I found the answer, in a piece by Dan Kois in The New York Times Magazine. Part feature, part review of their soon-to-be-released album They Want My Soul (coming Tuesday, yay!), Kois writes that
Spoon seems to look at rock songs analytically and figure out ways to deconstruct them, as a molecular gastronomist might do with a traditional recipe. Riffs and instruments stand out in Spoon’s songs, individual sounds in empty space. The result is that their songs deliver a pure rush of musical elation, the distillation of rock music, in the way that sea-urchin foam on an avant-garde restaurant’s plate provides a diner with the essential flavor of ocean. Spoon delivers the power of familiar songs without actually sounding that much like other rock music at all.
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga certainly has that feel, with nods to pop and soul that feel wholly organic even as they are layered on top of an indie-rock frame. Transference has a rougher, more aggressive sound, though it too feels complete and whole and wholly unlike most of what one usually gets from the dead genre known as alternative.
I’ve heard a few songs from the new album — so far, so good, so varied in approach and sound. I like the atmospherics of “Inside Out,” the sense of floating in unmoored modernity. “The Rent I Pay” is more aggressive, but mines some of the same thematic territory. “Do You” has a pop feel, but is driven by a nasty guitar that snakes into the mix.
This is not a review of the album — I haven’t heard it in its entirety yet — but I do like what I hear so far, (I’ll be listening this weekend — it is available for streaming via iTunes radio.)
Hank Kalet 