After ten years together it can be difficult for a successful rock band to keep its focus. Maybe your songwriting has lost its freshness. Maybe the group’s chemistry is feeling strained. Maybe a bumper crop of followers has driven the sound you pioneered into the ground, making it feel tired and stale. Maybe it’s time to call it quits, burn out instead of fade away.
Then again, maybe the band you’re in is Spoon, in which case none of the above will likely ever be applicable.
Big Things and Small Packages
That’s right, ten years and six albums into their career, Britt Daniel and company have crafted a masterpiece in Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.
The word ‘crafted’ is used for a reason: every bit of Ga Ga has been meticulously planned. From the stray bass notes that begin the record to the thirty or so seconds of silence that end it, it’s clear the whole package has been treated with painstaking care, ultimately carved into its lean thirty-six minute running time by the most obsessive of obsessors.
It certainly sounds like a Spoon album, but to say it skirts the line between one and the next (say 2001’s funky Girls Can Tell and 2002’s fantastically brusque Kill the Moonlight) would be cutting it short. Though they employ the same basic minimalist tenets of Spoon’s previous albums, trimmed and pared and snipped to perfection, the songs here are far more dense and rich.
Minimal Approach, Maximum Effect
Indeed, the band borrows heavily from its catalog, and certain tracks (namely “Rhthm and Soul” and “My Little Japanese Cigarette Case”) sound like they might fit perfectly on previous releases, but Ga Ga, equally nostalgic and groundbreaking, is far more than the sum of its parts.
Take, for instance, piano-driven centerpiece “The Ghost of You Lingers,” which brings to mind Moonlight’s ethereal “Paper Tiger” while simultaneously abandoning its familiarity and accessibility.
Then there’s “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb,” far and away the best song Spoon has ever released. Despite Daniel’s downer tale about a failing relationship, the music itself sparkles: tambourines ring loud and clear atop Jim Eno’s crisp, expressive drumming and a horn section adds a soulful punch to the procession. When every other sound drops out of the mix and Daniel uses the bridge to proclaim, “Life can be so fair, let it go on and on” accompanied solely by hand claps and chimes, the effect is nothing short of thrilling.
Ga Ga’s production is immaculate, from the curt, staccato pulse of “Eddie’s Ragga,” the the jazzy horns of Billy Joel-ish (and Jon Brion produced) “The Underdog.” Every song here is a winner, and by the time things wind down on “Black Like Me,” another piano ditty vaguely akin to Moonlight’s “Vittorio E,” the realization hits -- this is a turning point in music.
“Don’t make me a target!” Britt Daniel yowls on Ga Ga’s opening track, but it would be in the listener’s best interest to ignore his plea. Few other bands on the planet are more deserving of the attention.
