#thing/band/genre/etc on repeat for however long and nothing else

[seilon]

by no means do i regret cutting off my dad but. sometimes i remember experiences with him that are so novel i wouldnt ever replace them. specifically i am thinking about how he’d play this country song sometimes that i have no idea how he found about gay interracial cowboys in love. i never asked him about it. i think about it often

[newyorkermusic-blog]

A Little More Than Just a Spoonful of Sugar

TL;DR: The only way to motivate me to write is when it’s about something I love

WARNING: If you thought my Marvin Gaye article was just me sucking on someone’s dick, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to hear that Spoon is one of my favourite bands. I talked about them a bit in my piece on lyrics, but today I want to talk about them in a more general sense, because there’s a lot I feel is worth saying about this band in particular.

If you’re not a fan of this kind of self-indulgent article from me, I’d recommend turning away now, because this becomes very ramble-y.

Firstly, it is worth repeating that Britt Daniels has one of my favourite lyrical styles in the world, so much so that his style is a major influence on my own (something I talk about in the aforementioned article). The way he plays fast and loose with traditional lyrical convention is simply exquisite. Sometimes he follows conventional rhyming scheme, sometimes conventional rhythmic structure, but rarely both. He can speak of emotion largely through metaphor, or he can tell a story in a more literal sense, or he can do a bit of both. He’s not above being a bit funny or clever, and his lyrics above all else have excellent personality.

Having said all of this, good lyrics are only one part of the puzzle. Another thing I adore about Spoon is their evolving style. I’m perhaps writing this article a bit early, as their next album is set to release in just a few weeks, but each one released so far has its own style, both in instrumental sound, and in general personality. Gimme Fiction is very distinct from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, which is very distinct from They Want My Soul, etc. This is something I look for in particular with the bands I listen to, and is something I can cite as positives for bands like Foals, Klaxons (although their final album... eugh), and Cage the Elephant, whereas it’s a complaint I have about bands like The Heavy and Gnarls Barkley (both of which I really like regardless). I’m certainly not the type to complain about a band’s sound changing; on the contrary, I think that’s really important.

What’s worth pointing out about Spoon in particular though, is the way they’ve predicted how indie rock and art rock (two of my favourite genres, if you haven’t noticed) has evolved over the years. Gimme Fiction feels like an intimate storybook, and in my opinion predicted the sort of stuff Kings of Leon, Modest Mouse, Foo Fighters, and even Coldplay started doing a few years later. Then Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga had a more Van Morrison/folkish (major emphasis on the ish) feel, and then a few years later bands like Mumford and Sons, and Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats started getting major attention. And then They Want My Soul was more electronic, a little more pop, and certainly more atmospheric or space rockish in style, and that’s the direction Twenty One Pilots, and Florence + The Machine have gone. Hell, I’m excited for Spoon’s next record just to see what the commandment is for rock in 2020.

It’s a real testament to their sound that Gimme Fiction, which is almost 12 years old now, sounds brand fucking new and wouldn’t be out of place among what’s being released today. I mean, Simon and Garfunkel just released a live album, to literally every-fucking-body’s surprise, but you know what I mean.

If there’s something I’m a little apprehensive about with Spoon, it’s the parts Jim Eno comes up with for the drums. Now, I am full of respect for Eno. He’s a really good drummer, and an equally excellent producer. Sometimes, though, he comes up with parts that are just boring, especially for me as a drummer. One of the reasons Foals is my favourite band is that Jack Bevan, their drummer, always manages to find parts that don’t just fit the song to a T, but are also interesting to play and to listen to. Jim Eno doesn’t always manage this, and I think part of the problem is him approaching a song as a producer rather than a musician. Some of his parts are really fun to play, but some just feel like a bit of a cop out. “They Never Got You” is an excellent example - it’s one boring beat for the entire song, with no changes ever, not even a fill. That’s five minutes of doing the same exact thing. One of the reasons I found Divine Fits - which is the Spoon side-project with half of the members - so refreshing is that you got Spoon songwriting with (usually) more interesting drums, because Jim isn’t a part of that band. Again, I like Jim Eno, and some of his stuff is amazing, but some of it gets uncomfortably close to ACDC levels of simple, and I’m not always a fan.

The other thing with Spoon is that while they’re extremely good at nailing a feel and personality for each of their records, they’re pretty bad at things like song order and effectively opening and closing a record. If you’ve heard or read essentially anything else I’ve ever done about music, you know these are things I value highly. The composition of a record is really important to me, because that’s what sets apart the men from the boys. If something like song order is given as high a regard as the composition of each song individually, it shows the sort of care and effort being put in by at least one person in the band. 

Having said all of that, Spoon has had a really good ending song for an album exactly twice, with Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga’s “Black Like Me” (doubly so with a trick they pull on the vinyl release) and They Want My Soul’s “New York Kiss” (which happens to be one of my single favourite songs ever). Gimme Fiction ends terribly, as does Transference, and Kill the Moonlight. Girls Can Tell’s ending song, “Chicago at Night” is up for debate, but 2 out of 6 (seven if you include their really-not-good-at-all debut record) isn’t a great batting average. As far as openers, again Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is champion with “Don’t Make Me a Target”, but otherwise their albums just get straight to brass tacks without any of the build-up stuff that I personally prefer. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since an album like Demon Days by Gorillaz takes almost too long to get going, but I think it’s worth pointing out.

Within the records, song order still isn’t always fantastic. They Want My Soul goes into “Inside Out” for song #2, even though that’s a third or fourth song by any realistic standard. Bringing down the energy entirely into an experimental song #2 like this isn’t new for them (“The Ghost of You Lingers” from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga almost ruins the opening) but it’s still not a good practice. You should be sucking me in during the first two-three songs by being energetic and fun, which is why the Heavy know to save their first ballad for song #4, a lesson Spoon seems to have ignored. Gimme Fiction actually does this really well, by not getting truly weird until, you guessed it, song #4. That record goes through some cool changes with songs like “Two Sides/Monsieur Valentine” (another of my all-time favourites) and “I Turn My Camera On”, but at least it doesn’t immediately kill the vibe with a fucking synth ballad for song #2. On the other hand, I’m not sure that album even has a ballad, not to mention the fact Spoon doesn’t do traditional ballads like at all. This song order issue is a problem that carried over into Divine Fits, so maybe Britt just knows something I don’t, but it’s certainly a little frustrating for me.

Ultimately, however, Spoon is still one of my favourites, maybe even my second-favourite after Foals. There are a lot of things here that are major influences on my music and the way I think about music, and I will always be grateful if only for that. Spoon are among an esteemed group of things I will always remember as an essential, nostalgic part of my college experience.

I’m going to leave you with “Do You”, one of their all-time bests, because I’ve committed the blasphemy of not putting any gifs in this one at all, on top of the totally unnecessary nature of this article in general.

Spoon’s just really fucking good, so give them a try.

Peace.