Alright, round two, let's jump right in.
Instead of focusing once again on music from the 90s, how about something more modern, say in the last 18 months?
Spoon is fantastic, straight and simple. They're a great rootsy Rock & Roll band of the old school from Texas. They've put out amazing singles (I Turn My Camera On, The Underdog, The Way We Get By) and phenomenal albums (Gimme Fiction, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga). Metacritic dubbed them one of the best acts of the last decade, simply by weighing cumulative/aggregated scores from reviews. It's just good, solid music that rocks - great songs, great voice, great sound. So when this last year saw the release of Transference, their latest album, without the stoppage of the rotation of the Earth, I was a bit puzzled. The lead single in particular was a great piece of energetic, raucous noise. I fear we move to fast now in our pop-cultural momentum, so let's take a closer look into why Written In Reverse was fantastic and shamefully overlooked.
Making good use of a staple of rock history that sees only middling play these days, Written In Reverse leans heavily on a piano riff on the back beat of the kick drum. It sounds great and hooks your head in immediately but it's a very raw sound. To cut to the chase here, I think that while the song is a gritty, thumping tune, it's also a little too intense and unrelenting to be as popular as it could be. I love the back and forth dynamic Spoon is creating here, down and up, down and up. It's almost hypnotic - almost. Brit Daniel's vocals are as salty and jagged as ever, wailing like a dying man. While it makes for heartfelt and angsty music, it's not a pleasant sound in the sense of drawing you back for more - its more of a 'look at how crazy this is' vibe of a wounded animal. The guitars are equally broken and damaged, simultaneously sounding tightly wound and frayed at the edges. The way they plow through the locked-in-step song it seems that the machine could break down at any minute. It's an amazingly raw and real tune, just not necessarily one you would expect people to latch on to. That may be the heart of the matter here. The song is phenomenal, it really is. It just may be that Spoon poured a little too much of themselves into it to keep it smooth. There's none of the restraint from past songs like You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb or Sister Jack. None of the loose swagger of My Mathematical Mind or The Underdog. They've gotten a little ballsier and it may have cost them a little air-play.
I write all this and yet Spoon are still doing just fine. Transference received excellent reviews, people clamor to see them live. I guess I just want to make sure the cultural zeitgeist doesn't just zip past and onward towards some other meme-heavy fad. So by taking the long way round, I just want people to listen to Spoon, really. Just putting the word out there - get past the hard edges and they're still as fantastic as ever.
Instead of focusing once again on music from the 90s, how about something more modern, say in the last 18 months?
Spoon is fantastic, straight and simple. They're a great rootsy Rock & Roll band of the old school from Texas. They've put out amazing singles (I Turn My Camera On, The Underdog, The Way We Get By) and phenomenal albums (Gimme Fiction, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga). Metacritic dubbed them one of the best acts of the last decade, simply by weighing cumulative/aggregated scores from reviews. It's just good, solid music that rocks - great songs, great voice, great sound. So when this last year saw the release of Transference, their latest album, without the stoppage of the rotation of the Earth, I was a bit puzzled. The lead single in particular was a great piece of energetic, raucous noise. I fear we move to fast now in our pop-cultural momentum, so let's take a closer look into why Written In Reverse was fantastic and shamefully overlooked.
I write all this and yet Spoon are still doing just fine. Transference received excellent reviews, people clamor to see them live. I guess I just want to make sure the cultural zeitgeist doesn't just zip past and onward towards some other meme-heavy fad. So by taking the long way round, I just want people to listen to Spoon, really. Just putting the word out there - get past the hard edges and they're still as fantastic as ever.
