I’m getting antsy for the new year. Real antsy. And not January 1. No, that’s usually pretty overrated. But there is no way that the new year could be worse than 2009. It’s been a stinky year for both Pat and I, but I see things looking up in 2010!
In part because Spoon’s new album, Transference, is supposed to come out January 19. How long have I been waiting for this!? Two years. That’s how long! In the new world order of flavour of the month ridiculousness, that is forever.
If you don’t know who Spoon is, maybe you should educate yourself. Because I’m going to lay down a little truth sauce here. I would say that about 75 percent of the music I hear, all the “hot new music” MP3 blogs are trying to get you to listen to, is garbage. I can’t keep up with it all. I think to myself at least once a week “Aren’t there enough songs?” Oh, I’m so old! When I was a girl, music came on wax cylinders!
Maybe I’m being too harsh. It’s not, like, offensive garbage. I just don’t listen to most of it and think: “This right here is the sound of the aughts.” Maybe that’s why I don’t post quite as often as I should. I can’t stand to think that I’m just feeding the machine. What I write about is usually carefully considered. Life is too short to listen to shitty music. But I seriously digress.
Getting down to it: Spoon is hands down my pick for band of the decade. They were fashioning bold sounds before this new millennium rang in and I hope they continue to do so with Transference.
Stereogum revealed the album cover last month and the first single, “Written in Reverse” followed soon after. I’ve been listening to it non-stop ever since.
Britt Daniel somehow manages to write songs that sound exactly like Spoon songs should without becoming incredibly repetitive.
Their back catalogue is filled with the best pop rock this side of The Pixies. I swear, I could (and do) open up my Spoon playlist and never get bored. I love all their albums, but their last one, the ridiculously titled Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, was especially fantastic.
It says something that in the two years since that album was released, nothing has even come close to unseating “The Underdog” as the top played song on my iTunes. And there are five other songs from that album in the top ten.
“Written In Reverse” is a fantastic example of Spoon’s best work: Daniel’s nasal, hopped-up-on-cold-medication drawl, a building hooky chorus, angry guitar, a false ending and on this track, a piano pounding away in the background.
In short, I love it. Can’t wait for more. And I don’t want to spoil it too much by talking about it right now, especially since this is the first I’ve heard of the album. I just want to lay back, turn it up, nod along and wait for Transference to make its debut.
You can buy pretty much all of Spoon’s back catalogue at their web store. On vinyl, even! Go get it!
Some pretty sad news broke late last week: one of new music’s most important labels has apparently hit some very tough times. Chicago’s Touch & Go Records is not only cutting out new releases entirely for an indefinite period of time, they’re also closing their valued distribution arm. As a feature on Pitchfork outlines, that could have devastating results for smaller (but still excellent) labels like Merge, Drag City, Jade Tree, and Suicide Squeeze.
Not only does that mean it could be significantly harder to find releases by amazing artists like Minus The Bear, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and Spoon (among countless others) on those labels that heavily rely on the distro arm, but it means a label that has literally changed the face of modern music will no longer be bringing us brave new sounds.
It’s so hard to imagine a world without seminal albums from bands like Slint, Big Black, the Jesus Lizard, Pinback, TV On The Radio, Shellac, and the Mekons. There are a lot of labels that boast impressive rosters and classic albums, but I would wager that there hasn’t been one so cutting edge and ahead-of-its-time in decades.
As a tribute to Touch & Go I’ll be playing tracks from some of my favourite releases on the label this Thursday morning from 7:00 to 8:00am. Apologies in advance to the early risers that may not be stoked to hear Necros first thing in the morning, but I promise it’ll be over quickly.
Last.FM is a source of great amusement for me. I’m on there, and if you know my username, which you do not, you could find me and find out what I’m listening to and how often I’m listening to it. I wanted a record of what I listened to, but it’s kind of intruding a little further than I like to be intruded upon online and it can be slightly . . . embarrassing. I mean, I could spend ten minutes explaining exactly why I sometimes enjoy the musical stylings of Puff Daddy to some people, or I could just say “You know what, PAT? I LIKE “It’s All About the Benjamins” and I don’t care who knows it! SO THERE!”
Sometimes, I find myself particularly taken with a song and listen to it, ooooh, I don’t know, ten or twelve or 45 times. I just put it on repeat and sit back and let it wash over me. Once, I listened to Sarah Harmer’s “I Am Aglow” 25 times in a row with a smile on my face because it reminded me of that giddy, free-floating feeling of being in love with somebody and them not knowing it. But I don’t know how I feel about other people always being able to see exactly what I’m obsessed with musically all the time. I mean, intimately see, without any filters or blinds or editing or anything. It’s just out there.
Case in point. Earlier this evening, I was google image searching Britt Daniel. Because I have a crush on him.
And when I clicked on this photo, it took me to a Last.FM page that informed me, and whoever else who google image searches Britt Daniel, that I am a top listener to one of his songs.
This surprised me.
And embarrassed me a little bit. I try not to be embarrassed by anything, especially musical interests. But there it was. I stared at it for a minute. I could feel my cheeks getting pink. My secret was out. Okay, so it isn’t really a secret that if I had half a chance, I’d be on Britt Daniel’s jock so fast. I’d be all over that like a bad rash, but one that was damn gratifying to scratch. But this wasn’t some blog entry with me proclaiming my undying love. This was evidence compiled by some robot that watches how many spins a given song gets on my iTunes or reasonable facsimile of iTunes and without my permission, lists me as some sort of superfan. And, I AM, but jeez!
It caught me unprepared is all. Now that I’ve digested the information, I’m down with it. And I’m ready to share it with you. If you give Britt Daniel’s cover of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home To Me” half a chance, I think you’ll like it too. Probably not as much as me, but I guarantee it stands up to multiple listens.
The Arena Rock Recording Co. is where you can buy Bridging the Distance: A Portland, OR Covers Compilation. It’s a bunch of awesome songs being performed by a bunch of awesome artists and it benefits those less fortunate than yourself. So buy it.
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.
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