A typical Spoon song starts off cluttered and jumbled and in less than a minute it turns into a memorable pop song. It\u2019s a crafty attempt to make the pop perfection of the rest of the song sound like an accident, but because of the band\u2019s daft musicianship, the catchiness is anything but an accident. Think of it as Wilco in reverse.<\/p>\n
One of Spoon\u2019s greatest talents is its ability to emulate past pop greats while still sounding totally original. Britt Daniel\u2019s vocals sound like a mushmouthed marriage of early Mick Jagger and Ray Davies. True, many hipster garage bands try to emulate early Stones, but Spoon has distanced itself from that crowd by including piano and horns, which are generally perceived as uncool in modern rock.<\/p>\n
While Spoon has yet to release a bad album, their 2002 disc Kill The Moonlight<\/i> may be its best album. Much has been made about Daniel\u2019s vocals, but the album showcases Spoon\u2019s secret weapons: the sparse piano and tambourine work of Eggo Johanson and drummer Jim Eno. The opening beats of \u201cSmall Stakes\u201d pull the listener into Daniel\u2019s lyrics, which initially sound like a weekend anthem: \u201cIt\u2019s all right Friday night to Sunday \/ It feels alright keep your mind on the page,\u201d before Daniel sobers things up with a line like \u201cThe big innovation on the minimum wage \/ Is lines up your nose, but your life on the page so c\u2019mon.\u201d <\/p>\n
Daniel has said in interviews he focuses more on sound than lyrics, worrying more about how the syllables sound against the musical backdrop than making it in the poetry world. Ironically, it is that very approach that makes seemingly random tossouts like \u201catom bombs and blunt razors!\u201d that sound more poetic and alive than many of his contemporary songwriting peers. <\/p>\n
The first half of Kill the Moonlight<\/i> seems like a showcase of Spoon\u2019s talents. We have the band showing its Motown mojo with \u201cThe Way We Get By,\u201d street level garage rock with \u201cJonathon Fisk\u201d and sexiness in \u201cStay Don\u2019t Go.\u201d But the album really comes into true form during the last half of the album as the breezy guitar work of John Clayton and Mike McCarthy effortlessly glide against Johanson\u2019s piano in \u201cDon\u2019t Let it Get You Down.\u201d The song leads into four more dead-on perfect pop songs. <\/p>\n
The album closes with the heartfelt \u201cVittorio E.\u201d, a song that lyrically could have been a momentum killer for the band (\u201cI took a river and it wouldn\u2019t let go \/ I want you to stay and I want you to go\u201d) but once again, the guitar and piano provide some much needed gravity, making Daniel\u2019s aching plea of \u201chold on\u201d sound like a rallying cry. With \u201cSmall Snakes\u201d and \u201cVittorio E.\u201d serving as bookends, Kill the Moonlight<\/i> becomes not only a great album for Spoon, but an excellent pop album in general.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":28591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7865],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-40065","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-spoon","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40065"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}