Spoon

spoon's much anticipated latest album "ga ga ga ga ga" (named after the sound from their song) dropped last month. you can hear the entire 30 some minutes streamed here. these guys have been around for a decade, and most people regard their '02 album "kill the moonlight" as some of their best work. they're widely praised for producing strong 'no filler' albums.

i first heard of Britt Daniel (the lead) because of his collaboration with Conor Oberst (bright eyes) and another group, i love you but i've chosen darkness. hehe. since then, they've popped up in wedding crashers, stranger than fiction, and this jaguar commercial.

sometimes artists go overboard trying to make their pieces really complex and engaging, only to turn out something 'interesting' at best. and sometimes you have to research about a piece of art to appreciate its historical value and whatnot, but generally i like music to speak for itself. Spoon has a lot of good qualities - it's thoughtful and detailed, controlled, experimental, naturally evolving. i like the music because it's fun to listen to. this album is a toe tapper with bits of flair, funk, and volatility. maybe because their producer is also their drummer. plus i'm partial to egg shakers, tambourines, and mariachi horns. still, it never gets too silly, emo, or plain weird.

ga starts off with the political 'don't make me a target' (the band hails from texas)
Thugs and stick and bats and balls
for nuclear dicks with dialect drawls
they come from a parking lot town
where nothing lives in the sun

'you got yr. cherry bomb'

peaking in the middle with 'eddie's ragga' and 'the underdog' (its video is just one long, continuous shot).

finally, it ends with a delicate 'black like me' that is reminiscent of wilco. it's strange, but britt can go from sounding like jeff tweedy to kurt cobain (like on 'me and the bean'). enjoy britt as gospel singer in 'bring it on home to me' sam cooke cover.

they make a lot of direct/indirect references to chicago. in 'black like me' they mention spending the night in the map room. could it be THE map room in chicago?

[btw, i kept typing 'snoop' instead of 'spoon'. have i got rappers on my mind? sry yoda, the next one will be electronica, i think. ]