This Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of Spoon’s Gimme Fiction, which was celebrated by GQ as “the most important rock record of the past decade.” Not the most important Spoon album or indie album. According to the author, between the years 2005 and 2016, no rock album, period, was more important than Gimme Fiction. I respect the energy, if not the merit, of the argument. First off, like literally every single retroactive look at rock music in the 21st century, the author portrays the genre in a state of crisis against all available contradictory evidence. They also describe My Morning Jacket as “uncritical retro revivalists” in the year they made Z.
Beyond that, Gimme Fiction is the fourth-most important Spoon album of the 2000s and that’s an indisputable fact — Girls Can Tell is the one that rebooted Spoon’s career after a brief and bitter spell on a major label, Kill The Moonlight was their first widely-acknowledged masterpiece, and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga has sold at least twice as many copies as any other album they’ve made.
But I think the most bizarre aspect of the piece is the author’s need to describe Spoon as important, let alone “the most.” Spoon has been hailed as the most consistently excellent American rock band of the 21st century, the type of band for which the Five Albums Test was made. And yet, they endure largely because they’re resistant to hyperbole. Spoon makes instant classics, but nothing showy enough to create the aura of “masterpiece” or “earth-shattering.” They will finish in the top ten of most year end lists, but never No. 1. “Important” albums don’t always age well, Spoon ones always do, even after nearly 30 years. Here’s my take on which ones have aged the best.
10. Telephono (1996)
Telephono served as Spoon’s introduction for a select handful of people — KVRX listeners in Austin, indie record store clerks flipping out over anything Matador released in 1996. Aside from that, Telephono is an album that even relative Day Ones would first hear at least five years after the fact, something whose value largely stems as a comparative point for Spoon’s celebrated 21st century output. Yet, even if Telephono is a curiosity, what’s surprising is how unsurprising it is. Just about everything that made Spoon Spoon is already in place, although they’re perhaps still a bit too in thrall to their Wire and Pixies records: The co-ed harmonies and Daniel’s occasional lapse into Frank Black vocal tics are a rare glimpse into Spoon having a firm command on their songwriting basics while still trying to figure out who they wanted to be.
9. Lucifer On The Sofa (2022)
We love a “their best since Achtung Baby!” joke around these parts, but for those who aren’t as familiar with hoary music critic tropes, allow me to explain. Think about a legacy band that, for a time, veered into more experimental territory that was initially well-received but saw them slip either commercially or critically, or possibly both. In that event, there’s an album that stands as the “form” in “return to form.” Achtung Baby is the most obvious example, with Automatic For The People a close second, and the punchline is that U2 and R.E.M. were constantly making “their best since!” albums, each of which were conveniently thrown under the bus whenever the next “their best since!” album came out two or three years later.
The idea of Spoon making a “return to form” is funny to consider since the one thing they’ve been known for above all else is their consistency. And yet, here we have Lucifer On The Sofa — according to Rolling Stone (the primary source of “best since!” gags), “a consistently excellent band takes it to a new level by getting back to basics.” They also say, “Spoon are the most reliable great American rock band of the past 25 years. That might say more about American rock than it does about Spoon,” which is definitely the most backhanded compliment I’ve ever seen from a 4.5-star review in that publication.
So what exactly did it mean for Spoon to get back to basics? Was it covering their Austinite indie brethren on the opening “Held”? Because Dave Fridmann is still in the credits, and so is Mark Rankin and Justin Raisen, which put Spoon one degree of separation from Queens Of The Stone Age and Charli XCX. This is a loud album but a professional one, far removed from their prickly, post-punk origins, and the highlight is the first ever arena rock Spoon song; That’s the one co-written by Jack Antonoff. Otherwise, Lucifer On The Sofa does indeed achieve a baseline “yup, sounds like Spoon” quality that’s a bit deflating in light of the restlessness that typified Kill The Moonlight or Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga or whatever “form” Spoon was supposed to return to here. In fact, Lucifer On The Sofa is without precedent in the catalog, the first time Spoon simply “made a Spoon album.”
8. Transference (2010)
A perfect Contrarian’s Choice — follows an artist’s most popular and critically acclaimed album, is more “raw” and “difficult,” and endured an unusually muted reception upon its release, one where the 8s become 7s and the four-star reviews slip to 3.5. This was pretty much the point of Transference, which countered the precise, pop perfection of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga with a record that’s literally half demos. Britt Daniel himself has referred to the self-produced Transference as “uglier” than Spoon’s past records, though that wasn’t the initial intention: they ended up scrapping earlier sessions with Mark fucking Ronson.
Still, after an album with so many definitive statements, Transference settled into uncertainty and communication breakdowns: witness the confusion inherent in song titles like “Is Love Forever?,” “Written In Reverse” and “Who Makes Your Money.” Transference has the best lore of any Spoon album, one with a truly divisive reception and also the highest debut on Billboard (No. 4! Indie rock in 2010!).
I imagine its placement on any Spoon album ranking list is the one that says the most about the person who made it. And it’s just one man’s opinion that Transference remains fascinating for never truly revealing all of its secrets by design, but also ranks this low because that inability to truly know Transference is tied up in Spoon making their first album of the decade that wasn’t exclusively memorable songs.
7. They Want My Soul (2014)
You’d figure Spoon could completely dictate the terms of engagement on their return to the majors, but there’s a paranoia and internal conflict coursing throughout They Want My Soul exemplified not just by its album title, but this bar from “Outlier” — “I remember when you walked out of Garden State / ’cause you had taste.” The first part of that line is directed at a long-lost friend, but the latter opinion is presumably Daniel’s own, which casts a lot of the artistic choices in a curious light.
Co-producers Dave Fridmann and Joe Chicarreli make for a maximalist-on-maximalist tag team, each with a sonic signature completely at odds with that of Spoon (also, Chicarreli worked on both The Shins and The White Stripes records in 2007, maybe Daniel changed his tune since “Small Stakes”?). Are they here because Spoon wanted a challenge or because they were still subject to major label meddling 16 years after A Series Of Sneaks? Did “The Rent I Pay” and “Do You” sound comfortable between Foster The People and Bombay Bicycle Club songs on SiriusXM because Spoon was catering to mid-10s mainstream trends, or the other way around? What does it say about Spoon’s “triumphant return to form” that synth-heavy highlights “Inside Out” and “New York Kiss” sound a lot like Daniel’s recent work in Divine Fits? What are we to make of Spoon’s second stint on a major label also lasting only one album? While the occasional ill-fitting slickness of They Want My Soul can’t help but make it a lesser Spoon album, it’s still one of the most fun to think about.
6. Hot Thoughts (2017)
Hot Thoughts arrived two-and-a-half years after its predecessor, but on Spoon Time, that makes it a virtual Amnesiac, Two Hands, or Weird Era Cont. — a relative “quickie” companion piece to its more celebrated big brother. Indeed, They Want My Soul and Hot Thoughts feel like mirror images, with Dave Fridmann trying to fit himself into the Spoon sound on the former, and Spoon trying to make a Dave Fridmann album on the latter. As a result, Hot Thoughts is the weirder, wilder, more truly experimental of the two.
The title track and “Can I Sit Next to You” are such literal come-ons that they’re basically Afghan Whigs songs, “Us” and “Pink Up” veer off into dubby, digital bubble baths, and the beat change on “Whisperandi’lllistentohearit” is one of the most exciting moments of the band’s third decade (has any band made more consistently effective use of a tambourine?). Its cooler reception make it feel more fresh a decade later, and yet, much like They Want My Soul, Hot Thoughts ends up being a little less than the sum of its intriguing parts; the “classic” Spoon songs like “Shotgun” don’t ground Hot Thoughts so much as confirm that they didn’t go far enough into the unknown.
5. A Series Of Sneaks (1998)
Let’s consider the alternate reality that so many Spoon fans wanted for A Series Of Sneaks in 1998 — “Car Radio” or “Metal Detektor” become college radio hits with an occasional spin on MTV or a late-night appearance where Conan O’Brien holds up the CD and mentions how many year-end critic’s lists it made. A Series Of Sneaks does reasonable numbers and Spoon has a solid career path similar to bands who similarly were “indie” in spirit while cashing major label advances in the 1990s, like Built To Spill or Dinosaur Jr., or hell, maybe even Modest Mouse if things broke right.
Catchy as it was, Spoon’s brand of jittery, cryptic power-pop couldn’t have been more at odds with what was actually on the radio in 1998, whether it was alt-rock or college rock; Daniel himself said that A Series Of Sneaks was him trying to gain distance from the electric guitar, which was “too used, too simple, too alt-rock.” In retrospect, A Series Of Sneaks tanking is the best thing to happen to Spoon — it didn’t just serve as the inspiration for the cathartic Girls Can Tell (plus the Ron Lafitte-related songs attached to Series’ 2002 Merge reissue), but gave Spoon the high ground that made celebration of their ensuing output feel like a moral imperative. There’s a risk of A Series Of Sneaks being reduced to a plot point on their hero’s journey, but as a piece of music, at least give some credit to Elektra for thinking something this stubbornly idiosyncratic could sell at all.
4. Gimme Fiction (2005)
Most artists worthy of lists like these eventually make their “sprawling,” “adventurous” album — the one that’s at least 15 minutes longer than the others, with a couple of dud experiments that are beloved nonetheless for its willingness to defy expectations. Gimme Fiction is that album for Spoon, almost by default — though just shy of 44 minutes, it’s the longest LP in the catalog and the relative frills of Gimme Fiction make it feel like Sign O’ The Times compared to the minimalist masterpieces that came before.
Daniel’s handsome rasp and Spoon’s peerless quality control ensure they never sound uncomfortable as they subtly reinvent themselves on a track-by-track basis: the seasick shanty of “The Beast And Dragon, Adored” somehow doesn’t feel at odds with the icy-hot disco strut of “I Turn My Camera On,” nor do the streamlined synth workouts (“Was It You?,” “The Never Got You”) make for a jarring transition to the shifty piano-pop of closer “Merchants of Soul.” There’s enough space in between for alt-country beer blasts (“Sister Jack”), fanciful folk-pop (“I Summon You”), and, in perhaps, the biggest divergence from Spoon’s wheelhouse, a song that’s just one long verse (“My Mathematical Mind”). It’s often perceived as the overlooked middle child between the Spoon albums that made 2000s Best Of Decade lists, but I’ll give Gimme Fiction this: I distinctly remember hearing a leaked version where the tracklist ran backwards and it was every bit as good.
3. Girls Can Tell (2001)
The year is 2001 and a bunch of major-label washouts bet on themselves, channeling all of their frustration and self-loathing into a disgustingly catchy album on a new label that vaults them into a rarefied echelon of popularity and acclaim they occupy to this very day. Yes, this is a Spoon list, so you can see where I’m going with this, but I am also talking about Jimmy Eat World’s Bleed American… and I could not imagine Britt Daniel at the turn of the century looking in the mirror, begging not to write himself off yet.
Though Girls Can Tell is the opening argument for Spoon as the most consistently excellent band of the 21st century, it’s a complete outlier in their catalog for having such a transparent emotional tenor — that being, Britt Daniel is down bad. “Tough break handjob sent me back home to ma / Back to Cowtown and the fish shop and the mall,” he barks on “Take a Walk,” and home is where the self-hatred is. Throughout Girls Can Tell, Daniel tries to put a brave face during the day before hitting the same tired bar scene and coming home to count his losses — remembering every girl who gave him the boot and every girl who won’t give him the time of day, every shitty job in shitty business-casual shirts that makes him wonder how he can feel so washed up at such a tender age.
Of course, Girls Can Tell sounds like triumph now because Daniel expressed all of these things in taut and timeless pop songs too good to be ignored — but on those days where everything hits at once, Girls Can Tell is still an indispensable drinking buddy, a reminder of the hope that comes from hitting rock bottom and realizing there’s nowhere to go but up.
2. Kill The Moonlight (2002)
I want to talk about a high school friend of mine named Matt. Up until senior year, he was generally a well-liked guy, but not what you’d describe as one of the “popular kids,” someone who participated in multiple varsity sports but wasn’t really a star and got good grades without distinguishing himself academically either. And then, for reasons that none of us ever really hashed out, one of the cheerleaders took an interest in him and, just like that, he was that dude until graduation. I googled his name for the first time in maybe 20 years and it looks like he’s a senior director of business development at a San Francisco tech firm.
Point being is that sometimes, all it takes is just an external boost of confidence for someone to become that dude, and this is the story of Spoon after they made a record about the most miserable time in their lives and ended up with a certified indie rock classic. In the span of one year, Spoon transformed from a ’90s indie-rock relic to something sleek and sexy enough to compete in the New Rock Revolution, rather than serving as counterpoint to bands like The Strokes and Interpol.
Daniel cast off the small stakes of 30-something heartbreak to pontificate on the meaning of life (“The Way We Get By”), while “Something To Look Forward To” and “All The Pretty Girls Go To The City” made Spoon a band you pre-game to before a night on the town, not the band you listen to after you strike out. And they did it all without sacrificing any of their contrarian impulses; Kill The Moonlight is one of the most unique-sounding indie rock records of its era, defiantly minimal in a way that can be disorienting (see: the severe stereo panning on “Don’t Let It Get You Down,” “Back To The Life”‘s dubbed-out take on Led Zeppelin’s “Boogie With Stu”), blood-pumping (the rawk outlier “Jonathan Fisk”), and downright eerie (“Paper Tiger”), stripping indie rock down to nothing more than literal rhythm and soul.
1. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (2007)
If it isn’t the best Spoon song, “The Underdog” sure feels like the definitive one. At once sprightly and surly, Britt Daniel honors his obvious lineage of respected, late-’70s “Angry Young Men,” but also the less cred-conscious piano man who actually wrote a song called “Angry Young Man.” And of course, there’s the key lyric on the chorus: “You got no fear of the underdog / that’s why you will not survive.” “The Underdog” lends itself to a pat interpretation of Spoon getting the last laugh on Elektra and disgraced A&R Ron Lafitte, but in 2007, it could be taken as a triumphant statement for indie rock as a whole; bands of Spoon’s ilk still weren’t doing platinum numbers, but indie rock was in the midst of an explosion where seemingly all of the people with cachet were discussing the latest moves of Arcade Fire and Panda Bear and getting granular about pop stars was seen as the pastime of true weirdos.
Similarly, if Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga isn’t the best Spoon album, it sure feels like the definitive one. Coming at the exact midpoint of their discography, it was the first time Spoon acted the part of an A-list rock band, and not just an indie rock band punching above their weight class; the intention of writing “This Record Is A Hit” in the liner notes may have been sarcastic, but it wasn’t wrong. “The Underdog” started popping up in places where you’d never expect to hear a song from a band on Merge and Spoon earned their first top-10 debut on Billboard. From all available data, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga had sold over 300,000 copies by 2010 and it’s probably approaching gold at this point.
And yet, there’s barely anything notably different about Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga than what came before. Only this time around, all of the experimentation of albums past sound like R&D for their version of Thriller or Hysteria, an intentional singles machine that doesn’t mask its painstaking studio craft. “Don’t Make Me A Target” was the meanest Spoon opener to date and also had the stickiest hook. Whereas use of treated piano or exotic instrumentation were the mark of outliers in the past, “The Ghost Of You Lingers” and “My Little Japanese Cigarette Case” hang tough with the more obvious singles like “The Underdog” and “Don’t You Evah.” “Black Like Me,” questionable title aside, is a rare outpouring of pure warmth from a typically obtuse lyricist, the type of closer that confirms whatever impulse you had to call “instant classic” from first listen.
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of little moments that can be appraised like facets through a jeweler’s loupe, but a diamond is meant to impress casual viewers at a distance, too. Though I was secretly hoping I’d be able to justify a less chalky No. 1 pick, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is the definitive Spoon album because it’s also the best.