TRANSFERENCE | Spoon

A CLOSER LOOK AT SPOON
Artwork & Words by David D. Robbins Jr. ©
Album: Transference •  Release Date: Jan. 18, 2010 (US) /19th (EU)
(Right click on song names, open in new tab to see YouTube videos.)

It’s time for a Spoon retrospective …

When Spoon released its debut full-length LP Telephono, in 1996, it was clear this Austin, Texas band was talented — playing full-speed-ahead rock, from the gut. Telephono sounded like a band on the verge of defining themselves, but still tinkering with sounds. Songs like “Don’t Buy the Realistic” and “Not Turning Off” swirled with Nirvana’s “Bleach”-like energy, primitive bass-lines bludgeoned like P.J. Harvey on “Dry”. Lead singer Britt Daniel could screech with the best of them — over tracks like “Cvantez” — that built to frenetic fury like the Pixies.

The 2002 release Kill the Moonlight saw the band mature. “Paper Tiger” began with an odd looped breathing noise, with the clanking of two drumsticks keeping the beat like a metronome. It was mood-drenched and metro-sensual, with Daniel’s voice and lyrics as engaging as David Bowie.

Spoon was in the process of finding itself. Soul-mining. The band was close to figuring out a way to take the pop melodies from the 80s, the dark punk edge of the 70s and meld it into a style that would eventually become taut with a nervous anxiety — swaggering with blue-blood bravado like Mickey Rourke playing Charles Bukowski in “Barfly“. Spoon was discovering its lethal combination of strutting staccato, and spastic fits of guitar.

The sound from the song “The Way We Get By” — with its full-on jangly piano would later ooze its viscous way onto Gimme Fiction in the form of the gorgeous “My Mathematical Mind“:

“I wanna change your mind
Said I wanna set it right this time
I’m looking through you
You know who you are.”

Daniel purred in a high falsetto that could make panties drop. Mick Jagger couldn’t have done it better. Spoon even cheekily inferred its admiration for the original British bad boys with its album-title nod to Gimme Shelter. “I Turn My Camera On“, snaked its way through one of the most sexually charged bass-lines since The Stones’ “Miss You” — it’s groove seemingly made for sweaty sex in perfect two-beat rhythm. Yeah, this song is that kinda kink. It’s white-boy gut bucket:

“I turn my camera on
I cut my fingers on the way
The way I’m slipping away
I turn my feelings off
You made me untouchable for life
And you wasn’t polite.”

There’s something to be said about a band’s progression — when they feel comfortable enough to acknowledge predecessors. It shows humility, and yet a bit of cockiness too. It shows growth. Spoon found their sound within the structure of their previous material. Guitar-work tightened. Daniel’s vocals stretched in different directions, like a yawning cat. Experimentation grew. Sounds were pared down, and sculpted. The band flexed it’s new-found muscles.

Songs like the album opener,”The Beast & Dragon, Adored” unfurled with the assuredness of a band that knew it fucking rocked. Spoon snarled, teased, and ignited with buzz-saw guitar that declared, “We’re here. We own this space.” It was a guitar style they’d played before on older tracks like “Believing is Art” from their 2001 record “Girls Can Tell” — but this time it was stronger, nastier, and diabolical.

You couldn’t play Gimme Fiction without listening from start to finish. “The Delicate Place” pranced around like a shirtless prima donna — it’s rhythms rolling and Daniel growling like Bauhaus’ Daniel Ash. “Sister Jack” showed the band could play stadium, anthemic Oasis-style rock too. They surged like a volcanic eruption on “The Infinite Pet“.

Some reviews of the 2010 release Transference compliment the album while also saying it sounds decidedly “like Spoon”. Okay, so this isn’t their best album. Gimme Fiction is. But Spoon is fine in their own skin. There’s more good on this album than most groups ever create.

The Guardian’s Michael Hann quoted John Peel’s description of the band, The Fall, when describing Spoon’s Transference: “Always different, always the same.” Scott Harrell of the blog CreativeLoafing wrote, “Rock-snob darling Spoon is just one of those bands that always sounds like itself.” (Both enjoyed the album by the way and gave it decent reviews.)

But let’s face it. It’s hard for Spoon not to sound like, well, um, Spoon. Just as Led Zeppelin often sounded “like Zeppelin”. Or U2 seems to keep their U2-ness intact. It’s okay that Spoon sounds like itself. It means it’s distinct from other bands.

Granted, a track like “The Ghost of You Lingers” from 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga felt like a throwaway — with erratic piano, and unintelligibly echoed vocals — but the album also featured the plush “Don’t You Evah” — a gorgeous cover of a song originally written by the band, The Natural History.

Spoon’s progression is natural for a good band. The model goes like this: Band mimics their betters. Band finds shape while still borrowing from their betters. Band finds their own sound. Band realizes they are just as good as their so-called betters. Band makes great album. Band fights to find a new inspiration — with hits and misses. Band matures. Band tries new things, which ironically leads back to its old ways and garage days.

There are some hits, near hits and certain misses on Transference. The album opens with a lo-fi sounding “Before Destruction” — which expands with synth violins, brush drums, a heavy acoustic guitar and a psychedelia closing. Not bad. “Is Love Forever” is a miss. The echoed chorus feels overdone and the minimal beat tired and soft. “Written in Reverse” is quintessential Spoon — and probably what Hann and Harrell are talking about when they say Spoon writes good songs that sound very Spoonish. But it’s still a damn good track.

Spoon also tries some cool new things. “Who Makes Your Money” is a trance-based standout. It’s liquid-smooth and controlled. One of the band’s best tracks. “I Saw the Light” is the longest song on the album at 5:32 — a sprawling creation that mixes Cold War Kids-style piano with great drumming from Jim Eno. Halfway through the song, the tempo changes into this cool pairing of piano and rhythm guitar. Spoon seems to have saved the best for last — with the Joy Division-esque “Got Nuffin” and “Nobody Gets Me But You” — two stellar tracks. Buy the album here.

Spoon “Written in Reverse”