Aphera Music

Paloma Frumento is a very good friend of ours and this is her guest review of Spoon’s new album, Transference, out today.

This review of Transference necessarily begins with a bit of personal history: the first time I heard Gimme Fiction, I hated it. This immediate and violent reaction, it seems, is destined to hold true for all subsequent Spoon albums. Granted, in the instance of Gimme Fiction circumstances were less than ideal. It was the middle of the summer and I was in bed with a 102-degree fever and serious case of bronchitis on a small Catholic college campus-cum-high school artist’s commune in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania. Claire was simultaneously reading aloud from the Mysteries of Pittsburgh in an attempt to test the Healing Power of Art. I preferred Amoxicillin.

Eventually I warmed to the band when given Kill the Moonlight and Girls Can Tell at the beginning of my senior year. First out of mild interest and then out of habit I played these on repeat as I filled out college applications and later, when I finally passed my driver’s test and discovered that they were the only CDs that functioned in my used car. In this way, the first minor key strains of songs such as “I Summon You” came to serve as a musical synonym for milestones and rites of passage. However with the release of the first single from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, I realized that after a few years of using Spoon as background music I had fallen in love with the dark timbres and rough textures that define their aesthetic. Bells and horns imbued “The Underdog” with a brighter, sharper sound that drove me to seek out instead Love Ways, A Series of Sneaks, Telephono and Soft Effects. I took the summer to work my way backward through their collection before I could appreciate Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga as another moment in the evolution of their unique style.

Thus while critics (and many casual listeners such as myself) will immediately laud the familiar minimalist structure and howling vocals of Transference, and while I am certain Britt Daniel is my soul mate, I can’t help but approach the album with my habitual sense of hesitation and skepticism. If Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga initially struck me as too light, Transference is too heavy. The dark timbres and rough textures that drew me in are only one side of their aesthetic. Although Daniel is a notoriously obsessive craftsman, what really makes Spoon work is his surprising playfulness and levity. Daniel constructs memorable characters (Monsieur Valentine and Jonathan Fisk) and narratives (Metal Detektor). He shudders, laughs, beat-boxes, hums, mimics guitar solos, and breaks all established rules of diction. Daniel does not shy away from the “darkness and shadows” of an honest emotional chord and yet he also presents listeners with bizarre, utterly fantastic dreamscapes. His genius is in this almost impossible balance.

However, on Transference Daniel is at times unusually heavy-handed. This is most clear in the ballad “Goodnight Laura,” which has him entering emo crooner territory. Here the stumbling piano and vulnerable vocals could be a refreshing addition but instead seem belabored. Daniel urges: “when you think your thoughts, be sure that they are sweet ones.” And that’s exactly the problem. The way Daniel lays on the vocals is a just a bit too saccharine. Perhaps the impact seems a little more calculated because I’ve heard it before. While the earlier succession of albums represented the evolution of a unique style, Transference contributes little new to the Spoon repertoire. Why visit “The Mystery Zone” when I’ve been to “The Delicate Place”? “Nobody Gets Me but You” even borrows a familiar riff from “Believing is Art,” without expanding it or adding anything new of interest.

It’s not so much believing that’s an art as making people believe. Though at first skeptical, over the years I have become a firm believer in Spoon. But no band, no matter how obsessive their frontman, is perfect. All I have left to say to Britt Daniel and company is: “You Gotta Feel It.”

I am tempted to write about this album simply what I’ve expressed to most people. And that is, ‘It’s Sooo Good!!!!’

I spent last evening sitting around a table with a few girlfriends drinking wine and listening to … uhh, the Real McCoy. I finally took over the music and put on Contra, advertising that, ‘this is Vampire Weekend’s album due to come out tomorrow!’ Everyone was impressed that I had acquired an album one day early and so they paid some attention. Meanwhile, and just by extreme coincidence, I overheard one girl describing some sort of ‘rice drink’ that she couldn’t remember the name of. I offered, ‘Is it called Horchata!’ I had just learned earlier that day, after having looked up the opening song of Contra, that a Horchata is a Mexican rice drink. Indeed that was what she was talking about.

So, although I don’t live in California, enjoying the middle-of-the-road weather patterns and weekdays on the beach, this was my middle of January Baltimore equivalent to California; sitting around a dinner table, drinking wine, discussing Horchata and other petty drama.

Vampire Weekend’s Contra is all about, Cali happy, care-free days. I was able to translate that sentiment into something that could exist in below freezing Baltimore temperatures. And what helped more than anything was while Vampire Weekend strummed and banged a fiesta of sonance in the background, I heard, ‘We will sit at the beach all day, even mid December. And you should too.’

Contra is a quality album, full of rhythmic nuance, cheerful falsetto, and a summer-in-the-sun sound that happens to hit us mid January. I highly recommend this album – my personal favorites are ‘White Sky’ and ‘Run’.