Tune-age Tuesday: SPOON

Last week Jentry (my wife) and I saw Spoon play to a sold-out crowd at the Showbox in downtown Seattle. Though I am a fan, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Granted, I’m a sucker for this band. And though I discovered them late (in the last year), Spoon have been a significant discovery for me. Their most recent release Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is a strong album. It opens with a classic Spoon-ish chord progression on Don’t Make Me A Target, the type of 2-string, rhythmic strumming found on Pedro the Lion records, but with a bluesy twist. And from the beginning singer Brit Daniels had me hooked. The guitar tone, the understated instrumentation, his oddball take on soul, all come together right off the bat. After that, it took a few spins for the rest of the album to grow on me. The obvious highlights are the reverby Cherry Bomb, and The Underdog with it’s super-catchy horn melodies.

The show was good. Not amazing, but solid. The band has a very interesting presence. They are very complimentary in the sense that Brit holds everybody captive with his voice and frantic moves, while the band just do what they do. And they’re really good at it. At one point during the show Brit pauses asking the fan in the front row where they got “that shirt?” He follows with, “That’s my favorite Prince record!” A favorite Prince record! Wow!

But then, that makes a lot of sense. I’ve known there had to be something beyond the simple, easily identifiable layers of Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger I’ve heard in his voice. I had wondered if it was Bob Dylan….maybe. But then he mentioned Prince, and it came together. Brit’s got soul. He sings the heck out of every track and does it in his own unique way. I bet he also has a favorite Michael Jackson record!

But the greatest thing about Spoon is how much they do with so little. Overall, their instrumentation is sparse, the kind of stuff a 3-piece could bang out in a garage. But somehow they make it sound big and full. Part of it may be Brit’s guitar tone, which is the combination of a vintage Gibson 335 and a Vox AC-30. It’s just dirty. But the songs themselves allow that tone to work beautifully. Though they tend toward similar tempos and beats, any guitarist who watches his hands will notice he rarely deviates from the use of the same simple chord structures song after song.

In the end, Spoon are simply good. I should’ve known. And that’s what Jentry and I talked about as we walked away from the Showbox, up the street to our car.