I didn’t get into Spoon until 2004’s Gimme Fiction. I loved and still love that album, it would likely be home on any “Top 10 albums of all time” list you ask me to come up with off-the-cuff, assuming I am able to think of anything at all (as I am not great at remembering things on-the-spot, nor off-the-cuff, since we are hyphenating idioms now). Either way, my love of that album, and subsequent albums Transference and They Want My Soul blinded me to the brilliance of their earlier records, with their paired-back production and understated nuance–oh, crap, I’m already descending into hyperbole.

(You might be asking yourself, “Wait, wasn’t Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga after Gimme Fiction and before Transference?” and you’d be right. Unfortunately I’ve never liked that album, despite–or perhaps because of–it being their true breakout hit album and typically being declared Spoon’s best album. I’m here to set the record straight: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is not Spoon’s best album.)

It wasn’t until 2017 that I finally listened to Girls Can Tell and Kill The Moonlight, their third and fourth albums preceding Gimme Fiction. They are both absolutely divine. In some ways, I am doing them a disservice, by picking this song from them to put on top of a post that is now about them. This song is not the best song on these albums, but it is one of my favorites and, in some ways, is perfectly exemplary of Spoon as a band.

Early Spoon oozes a laid-back coolness that is hard to describe, but this song sort of does it. Spoon is a fitted shirt hung on me–nothing else will fit right, or seem so directly applied. Every beat, every musical flourish in their songs feels like just the right thing, placed at just the right moment in time.

Unfortunately, not every Spoon album, nor every song, is flawless. Sometimes they stumble, and I think their constant flirtation with being big in adult contemporary pop rock kind of annoys me–the entirety of Hot Thoughts being very cringe, like a dad in aviators at a club hitting on a woman young enough to be his daughter. It says a lot that Britt Daniel’s track selection for Spoon’s greatest hits compilation only has the title track from that album.

Hot Thoughts basically killed my interest in the band, and I still haven’t listened to their latest album, 2022’s Lucifer on the Sofa. Why bother, when I can just listen to Girls Can Tell or Kill The Moonlight again? Listening to new Spoon would be like looking slouchy in a thin American Apparel t-shirt, instead of reaching for something tried and true, that fits right, like a fitted shirt.

It's been nearly a month since I've posted a song and for that, I apologize. I've been "working" on my "Best of 2009" and "Best of the 2000's" lists, and by "working" I mean that I formed the lists, fiddled with them, wrote a couple paragraphs for them, and then found the whole situation so daunting that I became paralyzed with fear and I'd say something like, "But this week I'll crank them out and get them up," but I probably won't and I don't want to lie to you. They'll turn up eventually, with at least one really awesome downloadable playlist for you to listen to.

Another reason I haven't posted anything is that with the exception of one song, that I haven't posted because I'm a lousy music blogger, this last month nothing has really stuck out to me. Luckily the new year brings new releases, and one of them is Spoon's Transference, which is officially the first release of 2010 that I am genuinely floored by.

I am a big fan of Gimme Fiction and practically nothing else by Spoon. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga never did it for me, it seemed to be a grab at the mainstream of sorts, which was weird from a band who's only point of reference for me their prior very literary, dark, and cinematic album. I've since fallen in love with Don't You Evah, but for the most part I'd never consider myself a fan of Spoon. Transference might change that, because it betrays Spoon as one of the most skillful bands I listen to.

Transference takes Spoon back into Gimme Fiction's more foreboding moments, where the mood of the music is full of apprehension and dread. Unlike Gimme Fiction, Transference isn't literary at all, there's no Two Sides, no story telling, no sinister parks in the night, just confusion, longing, and worry that it'll never end. It's almost jarring, how similar yet entirely different this is from Gimme Fiction, the moods are alike but... not, you know?

It's just impressive, how they change sides, and keep so consistent. Last years Eels' album was a mishmash of different periods, different sounds and styles, but Transference is nothing like that. Most Spoon albums aren't, they nail down a mood and they stick to it. Gimme Fiction never wavers, Transference never wavers...

I'm mostly rambling at this point. I'm on my fourth or fifth listen, and I'm running out of things to say. I like how the album cuts songs off in the middle of words, the subtle and not-so-subtle vocal effects... the fact that unlike Vampire Weekend's ridiculously disappointing Contra, these songs have hooks and they make me want to sing or dance or fuck, even if they're not really pop songs at all, and even though the mood isn't really the kind that makes me want to sing or dance (definitely fuck, though) they still make me feel good, and there's nothing more important than that.

In short: Thanks Spoon!

Kind of crazy to think that I still have 280 songs to go just to hit the year milestone. The sad thing is when you back up and look at 85 songs from a distance, it's only 6 hours of music. I've got maybe a week of radio show playlists. I'm the world's slowest DJ.

When I lived in San Diego five years ago (really?) I spent a lot of time alone. I had no real social contact with anyone outside of my job for about a year, but I also discovered that I liked writing fiction and I wrote a small amount of it that is somewhat painful to read now, but the ideas are strong and the feelings I had when I wrote it were phenomenal. It actually felt like that over the course of one day, a whole story was playing itself out involuntarily in my head, which I later wrote down after rushing home at ninety miles an hour down the 805-S.

I guess it was because I was alone so much, my head had nothing better to do than conjure up twisted fiction. Once I started spending time with people again, the spark I felt to write faded away pretty much completely. A couple times over the last couple years I have gotten very lonely and ended up writing something fictional, but never too seriously.

Does my muse only visit me when I am completely alone? Is that my curse? That if I want to write well, I have to seclude myself from reality? Am I that tortured artist, who has to tell people, "No, sorry, I can't be close to you, I must write, it is my calling!"?

Fuck that. I've been trying to shed the teenage feeling that what I do should come naturally and be completely easy from the start. Sure, there's the creative spark and sometimes inspiration strikes and it flows from you like wine from a cask, but it's foolish to think that it isn't any work at all. It was foolish of me to think that I could just do whatever I wanted without any discipline.

It's easy to become discouraged when you just assume you'll be good at everything. I think a lot of people are victims of this, and either they spend their lives trying to do things they never become good at because they quit when it stops being fun, or eventually they just become supernovas of low self-confidence.

A few people on SongMeanings claim that this song is about just this, that songwriting isn't easy, and it's easy to sit around and feel bummed out that it's not coming around naturally. You've got to force it, sometimes, and chase down that muse and grab her by the throat.

Part of the reason I am doing staires_!_ is just for this reason. I need to learn discipline, to learn how to write something interesting on command, how to force creativity when it doesn't just come around on it's own. You can get good at anything as long as you stick to it. Maybe one day I'll be good at this.