Spoon - They Want My Soul (2014)

8.6, Best New Music

the first paragraph of that review is hilarious

the whole review is insane

New York Times Magazine section feature/interview too:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/03/magazine/spoon-the-molecular-gastronomists-of-rock.html

omg no

for molecular gastronomists everywhere:

http://www.spooncereals.co.uk/

Spoon, the pea foam of rock

From the NY Times article:

Two nights later, “Jimmy Kimmel Live” aired “Rent I Pay,” the first song on their new album. The Buzzfeed music writer Matthew Perpetua tweeted that the song “slays” and added, “I’ve been trying to figure out what classic-rock song it reminds me of but can’t quite place it.”

The answer to Perpetua’s question is “I Love Rock ‘n Roll” as recorded by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. But “Rent I Pay” didn’t always sound like that, and its development epitomizes the way Daniel and Spoon approach the universe of pop music as magpies, plucking bright and shiny guitar riffs, bass lines, drum sounds and emotional effects and using them to build something weird and new. (And not just classic rock; the sound of one track, “Inside Out,” was modeled, Daniel told me, after Dr. Dre’s album “2001,” and the song sounds exactly like a delicate ballad set to a lush hip-hop beat.)

“Rent I Pay” was originally born from the bass line in Toots and the Maytals’ “I Shall Be Free.”

Gee, pitchfork, they're a rock band. They have a pretty normal line up of instruments and play this chord and then that chord and the song ends after a normal amount of time. Then another song starts. They are almost completely human people.

good old dimwit big perp doesn't know joan jett of course

Not trying to be grammar nazi but "the band themselves" always drives me up the fuckin' wall

As guitar rock continues its slow and inevitable transition into a bygone art

inevitable

the relaxation time of rock

rock becomes a bygone art. entropy increases. we all listen to children of men music.

i thought about posting about how i get annoyed when ppl call something hilarious mainly to display their spite, but that pfork thing is also actually p hilarious.

and vhs, i shouldn't have assumed spite. i'll just agree with you then!

Famous last words.

"Guitar groups are on the way out"

Hmm maybe a bit of a biased perspective there.

what a bizarre thing to say

the guitarist shall become ab outcast, forced to wander these hills alone while seeking shelter at the nearest abandoned Guitar Center.

yes, the guitarist shall be an outcast due to his rock hard abs. that is what I meant.

Still lotsa guitar rock bands in Pitchfork's best 2014 albums list

still lotsa guitar rock bands fucking everywhere!

i mean i get the point but to say guitar rock is inevitably transitioning into a bygone art is the dumbest thing ever, and i am *not* clinging to my guitar as button-pushing tank-topped kids in funny haircuts close in around me, i promise

It's inevitable in the sense that the eventual extinction of the human race is inevitable.

spoon do some great things with guitar and obviously they are a 'rock band' but i don't know how much i would think of them first as a guitar rock band, everything is so uptight and constructed on their records that it's more like, in places, they make use of guitars and the overall product of that is rock songs

wait so does that mean that the inevitable transition is over and there are in fact no more guitar rock bands?!

iirc at least three of the songs on this new record feature little to no guitar AT ALL wtf

so who's this other Spoon on Spotify?

that's an actual lowercase-s spoon that does this interesting synth-didge tribal EDM thing

Spewn

Transference is pretty great. Whoever said that was otm. Gimme Fiction is the only album I don't really care for, I think.

Think again. I'm sure you care for it deeply! Give it another shot.

ha, I plan to give it another shot. I think I was damaged by the PMF they headlined around that time.

this actually fits spoon pretty well

http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2014/08/critic-proof-bands/

except that their lyrics are (cryptically) 'emotional', which is what makes them serviceable as lifestyle music for the educated indie set

they've kind of got a thing for putting momentum-killing numbers up front in their tracklists huh

Inside Out is my favorite track of the album, so I don't know if I agree.

I agree insofar as "Rent I Pay" is by some distance my least favorite thing on it

well, kill was the wrong term, but for as uptempo a band as they are, the 2/3 slots on their last few tend to slow things down strikingly early

when are they covering 'ege bamyasi'?

Wow this gets pretty boring after the first few songs

ya the end of 'they want my soul' with the hard panned guitars is cool but nothing else really stuck with me

"New York Kiss" is my favorite tune besides "Outlier" but yeah

aw go back to yr national records yall ungrateful so and sos

haha the national are fucking boring. i love spoon, i'm sure i'll come around. i really liked 'transference'.

"I Just Don't Understand" is the only track that's actually bad, most of it just seems like generic late-period Spoon.

and that's the cover song, right?

They've fallen into this rut of midtempo tunes with a heavy plodding basic 4/4 beat which sometimes works but they could stand to try something different imo

"I Just Don't Understand" is the only track that's actually bad, most of it just seems like generic late-period Spoon.

― Immediate Follower (NA),

It was so bad on first listen that I was relieved to learn it was a cover.

They've fallen into this rut of midtempo tunes with a heavy plodding basic 4/4 beat which sometimes works but they could stand to try something different imo

― Immediate Follower (NA), Tuesday, August 5, 2014 11:44 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is why I've always hated Beck.

But that doesn't seem like an accurate description of Beck? I mean, like him or not, his past handful of albums have all sounded pretty different from each other, even if they are all reheats of stuff he's done better before.