Spoon

We are now about 5 days away from the release of 'Gimme Fiction', the fifth full length album from Spoon, aka America's Finest Rock Band. If you're not familiar with Spoon, they're a band out of Austin, Texas, which has a pretty thriving local music scene and hosts the annual South by Southwest Festival, and the Austin City Limits festival . They cut their teeth on Pixies style minimalist rock, with loud, crunchy guitars, short songs (many under three minutes), and an aggressive vocal style. Their first album, Telephono, is pretty tough to find, or tough to find cheap. Last I checked, it was going for over 50 bones on ebay.

They were signed to Elektra when they released their second album, A Series of Sneaks. They were dropped by their A&R man, Ron Laffite, just four months after its release, which inspired Britt Daniel to pen two tracks that appear as bonus material at the end of ASoS, "Laffite Don't Fail Me Now", and "the Agony of Laffite". ASoS is similar in style to Telephono, and it contains one of the coolest short rock songs I've ever heard, "Car Radio".

Their style changed with the release of album number three, Girls Can Tell. Less aggressive, smoother, a bit more slickly produced, it was a step in a new direction. More thought out, less spontaneous. Fewer obvious Pixies influences, a bit closer to something you'd expect from R.E.M., but the good R.E.M., before they got crappy.

On their fourth, the incredible Kill the Moonlight, Daniel discovered the piano, used to remarkable effect on "The Way We Get By", one of a number of standout tracks, including Small Stakes, Jonathon Fisk, Back to the Life, Someone Something, and Don't Let it Get You Down. The slick grooves of Girls Can Tell continued to evolve, but they brought back some of the spontaneity of the first two albums. You can find reviews of the most recent three albums, as well as the Love Ways EP from Pitchfork (once again, I've gone above and beyond and done the search for you).

They bring even more energy to the stage than they jam into their studio tracks. You don't realize how hard hitting a short rock song can be until you're pummeled with 12 of them in a half hour. The minimalist style transfers flawlessly to their live performances (at least the one I saw), and Daniel certainly has a charisma that is fairly engaging. Of course, that's pretty much from a two year old memory of their show at the Abbey in May of 2003. They'll be at the Vic in mid-June, and I'll probably post a review at that time. They had this nasty habit of hitting Chicago right about the time I was leaving town last year. They played the day I left for Alaska in June, and the day I left for home in December. This year, I'm planning vacation around their show.

The first six or seven tracks from Gimme Fiction are available for streaming here, and they're worth a listen. Daniel gets into a Tim Burgess circa Wonderland style falsetto on "I Turn My Camera On", and the piano is back "My Mathematical Mind". There also seems to be some dubbing/backing vocals on a couple of tracks, which is the first I've heard of that since Telephono. It's a welcome change and adds some depth.

I don't know that this will make them a commercial success, but FWIW, they're playing the Vic this time around, which probably holds three times as many people as the Abbey, so maybe that's a sign that they're building a fan base. Good and bad, I guess, as I love the Abbey, but I'm lukewarm on the Vic. It's certainly my most anticipated show of the year.