Spoon
Kill the Moonlight
Merge Records
Girls Can Tell,
Spoon's first album after
A Series of Sneaks and the subsequent major label fiasco that eventually landed them on
Merge, was great, but you almost got the feeling that the band was trying to mollify the very label that had dropped them, doing away with the rough lo-fi edges that had made
Sneaks so appealing in favor of a more polished pop intricacy. Well, on their fourth album,
Kill the Moonlight,
Britt Daniel and
Jim Eno sound like they're not trying to please anyone but themselves, and that's of course as it should be. Set free from expectations, they made a masterpiece of an album, returning to the vibrant minimalism of their earlier records, but doing so with greater panache and bravura than ever before. From the incantatory rhythmic experiment of "The Way We Get By" to the spare-guitar driven anthem "Jonathon Fisk," this is a band that's nailed its sound and aesthetic to such a degree that you just want to laugh and applaud as they rip their way through each crisp burst of lean nervy rock. Both those songs feature pointed lyrics about the dark side of adolescent life that say exactly what they mean with a minimum of verbiage. Musically too,
Spoon has stripped away everything unnecessary, getting right down to the raw, ballsy, melodic funk that's always been at the core of their sound. The record is brilliantly orchestrated, every small flourish -- smatterings of drunken piano, backwards drum loops, rhythmic hand claps, perfect little horn puncuations -- coming at exactly the right moment. And yet you don't think about how intelligently the songs are assembled as you listen, because the music is so rough and tumble, so immediate.
Kill the Moonlight is the work of a band totally on their game, and one which has ascended to the uppermost echelon of rock and roll talent.
Jesse Ashlock
last updated:
03/20/06
