Good Grief
I learned to love the act of listening to music at a young age, stretching out on the living room rug, wearing my dad’s stereo headphones that stuck out a foot from my head, the pair with the kinky cord that tangled miserably and leashed me to the massive stereo system as I flipped through my parents’ stack of wax, head bobbing along to the music that defined another generation and shaped my early sonic landscape. I dropped the needle on some of the finest vinyl ever recorded from the time I was eight years old on up. Who knew Loaded makes a great kids album? When I hit Grade 5, everybody was listening to the New Kids on the Block. If memory serves, I believe I tried to turn my friends on to the Beach Boys Pet Sounds that year. In high school, the New Kids were replaced by the Backstreet Boys and I was still mining my parents’ record collection for inspiration, singing the praises of boozey, bluesy Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company, augmenting my blue period with the emo, “nobody understaaaands me, maaaaan!” song stylings of Radiohead and The Smiths.
It’s been a long time since I’ve listened to an album that affected me on a level where the music felt like it was written specifically for me. But this year, Spoon released Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and I fell in love with the act of listening to music all over again. I want to write Britt Daniel’s name on my trapper keeper inside a white-out heart. I want to sing along into a hairbrush to all the oohs and ahhs of the Motown-inspired choruses. I want to stretch out on that rug of my youth, twist the headphones cord and examine the liner notes, memorizing the lyrics and melodies and let the music wash over me.
My current version of stretching out on the rug is something I could never do as a young girl: I like to see the groups I love live. Tonight, at Kool Haus in Toronto, I get to see one of my favourite bands play at what is surely a high point in their career. They played, and played well, on Saturday Night Live two weeks ago.
If that brief performance is any indication, I will effing love the show tonight and remember it always, much the way I will never forget the way Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga has stayed with me. Gimme Fiction was one of my favourite albums of 2005, so I had high expectations and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga did not disappoint. This is, without a doubt, one of the best albums of the year. Not on my list, but on every list. At first, I found it to be very happy. Cheery songs with trumpet fanfares and flamenco guitars are rarely described as downers. But the album has a layered feel, like a room painted so many times it feels smaller and more intimate. And at the same time, it retains some of the sparse echoes of songs we heard on their 2002 release, Kill The Moonlight, but with a Wall of Sound twist in “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” and the jarring, piano-driven “The Ghost of You Lingers.” There’s also a melancholy thread running through everything as Spoon does what they do best: describe life as seen through the eyes of the lovable losers. The lonely, the kicked-while-down, the heartbroken, the down and out and misunderstood. It’s evident in everything from the song title, “The Underdog,” to the bittersweet symphonic soundscape of “Don’t You Evah,” to the jam session-inspired “Eddie’s Ragga,” where Britt sings, “everyone loves a defective heart.” It’s so true. We do.
And nobody knows that better than Spoon, the Charlie Brown of the indie scene.
Sometimes, it takes a football yanked out of the way at the last second in the form of a nasty breakup to give us some of our best songs. Daniel apparently went through said nasty breakup while writing this album and all the emotional highs and lows of those days after the end are on display here. It’s kind of like a celebration of breaking up. Britt runs the gamut of emotions and we’re along for the messy ride as he wades through the entrails of this relationship and looks to the future with a cautious, but hopeful heart. On “Finer Feelings,” he sings the plaintive words, “Sometimes I think that I’ll find a love/One that’s gonna change my heart,” in his distinctive falsetto that is somehow nasal, gravelly and appealing all at the same time. I hope he does find that love. Because if these are breakup songs, I’d like to hear what a Britt Daniel love song sounds like.
I think if Lucy left that football there and gave ol’ Chuck a chance to kick it for real, it would fly through the air, straight and true and they’d both watch in awe. Then, she’d promptly punch him in the throat, drop him to the ground and call out, “Don’t get used to it, blockhead!” as she skipped away. I think there are sometimes people in the world who understand what that feels like better than most. They have a way of inspiring camraderie among the ranks of the misunderstood and unloved. I haven’t heard it done so well since Elvis Costello’s early days. To further cement that comparison, here’s Britt Daniel singing Elvis Costello’s “Veronica” on Veronica Mars.
We have all taken a run at that football and had it pulled away and when you can write a song that describes how it feels to fail miserably and make it entertaining and interesting and special, you draw people in. In the album closer, “Black Like Me,” as the song builds from sparse stacatto piano and easy guitar strumming to a Beatles-like crescendo of strings and Daniel’s whimpers and yips, he breaks down the wall and speaks directly to his audience: “All the weird kids up front/tell me what you know you want/Someone to take care of tonight.” He is reaching out for that connection, that dynamic, electric, emotional outlet of his music that says, “I know you. You’re me. Let’s be losers together.”
See, Britt Daniel, like Charles Schulz before him, knows that in life, there is grief, but damn, is it good.
Spoon - Finer Feelings [4:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Spoon - the Ghost Of You Lingers [3:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Spoon - Black Like Me [3:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadSpoon’s unstoppably catchy catalogue can be found through:
iTunes: zipp-ah-dee-doo-da
Spoon’s website: fliggidy-giggidy-goo
Merge Records: blizzidy-blorb. Seriously though, the label has some really great bundles for first-time Spoon buyers. Check them out.
