Thursday, February 4, 2010

Spoon - Transference (Merge Records 2010)



I literally watched this band grow up. I was at their first gig. My shitty band played several shows with them. Does that make me important? No. Will it allow me to present an unbiased opinion? No fucking way.





I dug that up cleaning out our extra room the other day. What does it have to do with Tranference, Spoon's latest offering? Nothing. I just thought it was cool.

Tranference has a mellower style to it than Spoon's 2007 offering Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, but that's not to say the music has lost any edge. Daniel's songs have always been edgy, even the mellower cuts, with a feeling that the tension and release could fall out of sync at any moment and result in almost visceral disaster. That Daniel takes such pleasure and is so adept at fucking with tension and release pop music paradigms only serves to take it up a notch.

Sound experimental? Spoon has gotten more so with each progressive release, and Transference takes Daniel's odd combinations of minimalist post-punk, krautrock, world beat, and just plain wierdness to the highest level yet. There's just no pigeonhole for this band. Nor should there be. They exist in Britt Daniel's own unique musical vision.

Album opener "Before Destruction" and "Written in Reverse" are the two big winners here, but there aren't any losers. It's also going to make the wait to see what Britt Daniel and Spoon come up with next practically unbearable.

4 out of 4 Can records

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you nailed it, and fuck all these humps complaining that it's not at all like the last album but still somehow not different enough to matter. Or whatever.

SMD

Anonymous said...

Although I am saddened by your use of the phrase "world beat". Please keep your Peter Gabriel fantasies to yourself.

SMD

Cyrus2342 said...

Nice. I'm gonna have to go pick this up. Forgot it came out.

MiseryCreek said...

SMD, you can live in denial as long as want. You can all it what you want. But there's a genre called "world beat" and Britt incorporates it, thankfully not too much. I think he injects just enough to know it's gonna piss you off.