Spoon

Spoon have gone the long way round. Had things been different, they would have arrived here in the late 1990s splicing their grungy pop somewhere between Kurt’s old mob and the Pixies on the likes of XFM, or maybe gracing John Peel’s show with one of their muddier efforts. But like many of their peers before them – a la Pavement, R.E.M, Flaming Lips, Snow Patrol etc – this Texan quartet spent several years floating in a kind of rock limbo, tied to a series of false starts, a wave of moderately successful independent albums, some tricky image re-thinks and possibly some deep soul searching. Quite unlike the aforementioned stadium stars or heroes of the pop charts, it quickly becomes clear from the songs of Transference - the band’s seventh album - that Spoon are not about to suddenly re -emerge as a watery mainstream act and deliver their 'Chasing Cars’ or their 'Shiny Happy People’ to win over the pop jocks over at Radio One.


So, it comes as no real surprise that the album itself begins with a couple of false starts. The percussive oompah plodding of 'Before Destruction’ and the sparse farce of 'Is Love Forever?’ lend themselves to the muffled sound of home demo tapes, or the rattle and twang of Spoon themselves being bent into shape to endure the numerous musical leaps an album like this expects of its band.


From the soulful groove of 'The Mystery Zone’ propped up with buttery bass lines and 80s synths, the album finds real momentum as it flickers nervously through bouts of foggy electronica ('Who Makes Your Money’), angry rock ('Written In Reverse’) bitter ballads ('Goodnight Laura’) through to the ballsy blues of 'I Saw The Light’ which is shot dead mid-way through, trailing off unannounced into a Krautrock-like outro overridden with scratchy guitars, stabbing piano and motoric drumming.


Despite the album’s obvious melodic appeal, the real draw here hangs around Spoon’s sprawling delivery and a raw innocence usually reserved for debut LPs by hungry young wannabes who tell it like it is because they don’t know any better. Transference is not the sound of a band about to invade the pop world. It’s not really a set of songs ready to dent the Top 40 either. In fact, it sounds like an album made out of accidental fortune, a record with cranky production values and baggy arrangements that reveals some of the most honest and mesmerising songs to be heard for some time. So who needs Radio One?


Mark Youll