Spoon - They Want My Soul (2014)

Feels like it has the glossy sheen of Ga Ga with the mostly-melancholic vibe of Girls Can Tell. I approve.

Yes! Only song I'm not feeling right now is "Outliers."

Also, I know some folks on another thread were shitting on Stereogum's review, but I thought the stuff about Transcendence was otm:

When was the last time you listened to Transference? Because you should listen to Transference again. When Spoon released their last album, early in 2010, the world responded with a resounding shrug. That can be a problem when a band is too good for too long: The world can learn to take them for granted.

I always thought it was unfortunate that album never really got much love (relatively speaking, of course). Truth be told, it's probably as good as this one.

the track that came out early reminded me of fridmann's production job on the last sleater-kinney record

will i listen to this before it is on spotify. who knows.

the initial rip that is out there has kind of fucked up production, assembled from different sources i think, some quiet, some loud. so.

It's another solid Spoon album and I feel like it's time for another solid Spoon album. They should win some sort of award for consistency in not sucking in rock music.

I think it's better than solid. Great, maybe their best even. The songwriting feels a little surprising - it just touches melodies and ideas (instrumental flourishes and bursts of noise) I didn't expect. The production is incredible, as we've come to expect.

The production sounds like they've pulled out whatever speaker / mic / filter combo they used on The Ghost of You Lingers and gone to town.

Daniels' paranoia is more entertaining than last time out.

maybe it's all the sound-clouds

"I Just Don't Understand" is the most conventionally arranged song he's ever sung: not crazy about it.

Yeah, not sure how I feel about that one yet, either. It's a cover though, right?

Yup.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDagZECOhJc

I remember walking out of King Kong / I missed my bong, why are films today so long??

knock knock knock knocks

thinking this might be rob pope's album, and maybe that's the first thing they have fridmann to thank for

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