New Spoon Album due on Tues, curious if anyone cares
 

I do. Care, that is. But that's mainly because I have been listening to Spoon for a long, long time. I was a little dorm dwelling borderline alcoholic with a busted heart when Girls Can Tell came out, and I felt like it was pretty close to perfect music. I felt the same way about Kill The Moonlight, and then I got arrested stealing Gimme fiction, so I backed off for a bit. Ga ga GaGaGaGaGa got me back into them, and Transference was a good record that ended with their best song ever.

I've got a promo of They Want my Soul sitting in front of me, and it's good by my standards. Not as good as it could be, but good. I'm curious about how it will perform, now that most of their fans are in their mid-30's. I'm not sure it will grab any new, romantic 18-year olds by the balls like their first few albums did to me, but I'm hoping they get some much deserved rep for it.

Anyone planning on buying it? Any former Spoon fanboys and girls who are not planning on buying it?

Spoon. What a stupid name. But... Great band. Really.

I've been a Spoon fan since their debut came out on Matador. Back then pretty much anything/everything that came out on Matador was worth a listen and Spoon was no exception. Telephono is a criminally overlooked album. They've managed an admirable career and - yes - I'll be checking out their new platter for sure...

iTunes has an Editor's review referring to it as their ninth album. It's not. But it's pretty fucking good. iTunes also calls it their most experimental, which it's also not (Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, methinks).

I just got through my first spin of it and, dare I say, it's as good as ANYTHING they've ever put out, IMO. Quintessential Spoon with some new twists and some rough edges. They make it look easy. Their 8-album catalog is as strong as ANYONE'S over the past 20 years...

boring

I agree. In my mind, I always consider the 90's to be the golden age of indie rock, but Spoon's catalogue beats Pavement's, at least in consistency if not in raw power. The only album I no longer feel an urge to listen to is Girls Can Tell. Actually, that and kill the moonlight and gimme fiction have all been so closely connected with certain eras of my life that hearing them now just feels off.

But yeah, they have a pretty flawless discography. And GaGaGaGaGa really reignited my interest in them. That album caught me by surprise. It sounded as perfect and relevant to my late 20s as A Series of Sneaks was to my freshman year of college.

I'd rather listen to The Stooges everyday. By myself and feeling alone in this world.

Than... ?

It's a good album, but apparently it's not selling well. I still can't believe they left MERGE, and I want to know the story behind it.

I've had They Want My Soul for a coupla weeks now (deluxe edish: vinyl, CD, beach ball, prints, button, the works) and it's absolutely BITCHEN. Now, it's amazing how music writers can praise a band who deserves praise and yet get shit spectacularly wrong: first of all, Spoon is NOT "essentially a one-man band"; Jim Eno's been there from the start, they did Gimme Fiction basically just between the two of them, and I think that Daniel's quantum leap from Drake Tungsten to master of the fucked-up pop song wouldn't have been possible without Jim. Second, how is the new album a "return to form"? When did they "lose" such a thing? With Transference? Ya gotta be kidding me - that's one of their best, possibly the best. And yes, "Nobody Gets Me But You" is so phenomenal it makes me think about my hot shrink... but that's another story. Third, comparisons to the fucking Pumpkins, Jack White and The Black Keys? Classic musical myopia - back in the late '70s and early '80s a lot of acts who didn't have jack squat to do with The Clash got compared to them just because Strummer & Jones' band was "the only one that mattered" (no, they were not); same bullcrap with goddamn Radiohead in the late '90s and throughout the '00s.

Anyway, props to the one and only Janet Weiss, credited on TWMS's liner notes for "song sequence services" - the album really has a great flow to it.