Still, at least they beat Kris Allen…
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[4.60]
Martin Skidmore: As indie goes, I find Spoon more tolerable than most, perhaps because each single seems to be in a different genre. Singer Britt Daniel puts some effort into it, and the music here is very old-fashioned pop-rock. I don’t think it amounts to so much, and the opening couplet rather made me cringe, but it’s okay.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: Spoon, to me, have always seemed like an unremarkable, workmanlike, inoffensive indie guitar group, and innocuousness naturally breeds no enemies. Kudos to them, then, for introducing that awfully unpleasant piano like they’re covering The Black Eyed Peas’ “Joints & Jams” (remember, that awful interminable piano jam at the end? Ugh), because it becomes the hateful focal point instantly, overshadowing everything else.
[2]
Erick Bieritz: This ugly junk-heap beat might make sense in some other context, but Spoon just seems to be aspiring to be an unfunky troglodyte version of Maroon 5.
[1]
Ian Mathers: These guys used to be so assured, but this is as awkward as the “reverse/hearse” rhyme of the first two lines.
[4]
Chuck Eddy: The pervasive hunch in my head is that my fellow Austinites here are better than I usually give them credit for. But usually when I take time to go back and check out their music, evidence suggests the opposite. That’s happened twice just this week. A couple days ago I was piecing together a SXSW playlist for Rhapsody, and I had the lightbulb idea of including their infamous old anti-Elektra-Records complaint “The Agony Of Lafitte” back-to-back with Cracker’s (way better it turns out) anti-Virgin screed “Ain’t Gonna Suck Itself,” but the Spoon song sounded so pale I wound up resorting to their (only, in my book) old standby “Small Stakes” instead. Then last night I was watching an old Veronica Mars episode, and when the credits ran, what I had taken to be an entirely ignorable piece of college/alt/emo fluff wisping away in the background turned out to be “I Summon You,” off Gimme Fiction. So as much as I’m open to being convinced Spoon are as special within the indie realm as everybody insists, I’m still not there yet. This track isn’t bad, though: slightly funky groove, a clever rhyme or two, borderline pretty falsetto and chunky guitar fills, and the singer could even get a job in actual rock band if this gig doesn’t pan out. As usual with these guys: Pleasant and tasteful. But exciting, engaging? Let’s not get carried away.
[6]
Michaelangelo Matos: What stays with me on Transference isn’t the more straightforward rockers but the more rhythm-based stuff: “The Mystery Zone” and especially “Who Makes Your Money,” which sounds like minimal techno reimagined by and for rock fans. Which isn’t to say the rock songs don’t make an impact. This is a good example, with the guitars and drums lurching hard and Britt Daniel getting off a volley of good lines (“Some people are so easily shuffled and dealt”). I like it a lot; just don’t love it the way I do the above-mentioned.
[7]
Alfred Soto: “All I know is all I know,” wails Britt Daniel on the most straightforward track from their most abstruse album, following it with the evidence: bucket loads of his patented strum-raunch to augment the barrelhouse piano. After such knowledge, another well-known wit once wrote, what forgiveness?
[7]
Alex Macpherson: The first Spoon song I’ve heard, you guys! And even worse than I’d expected: pinched, prissy barroom blues, bereft of swing or spirit, and a singer who seems to be under the mistaken impression that his emphysematic bellow is an adequate attempt at mimicking a wracked bluesman’s croak.
[3]
Iain Mew: In line with the little else I’ve heard, Spoon do meticulous and finely detailed very well. Just wish that they could (or would) cut loose a little more when the song begs for it as much as this does. Even when they go for strangled half screams, they sound far too in control to really get carried along with it. The crunch into the coda is a slight saving grace but comes too late.
[6]
Dan MacRae: Approaching swaggering but never really reaching it, this feels like saloon rock for people that would dive underneath a table at the first hint of a gunfight. Sensible, but sorta dull.
[5]