The Wheel's Still In Spin: Spoon

Release Date: 10 July 2007 (Merge)

For their sixth studio release, Spoon has created another music gem. With strong dynamics, the songs can volley from sparse to layered arrangements. Instruments can drop out, but the melodies and rhythms stay intact. Some songs are played with a similar style to previous Spoon tracks, while other moments on the album sound like the band is reinventing itself. Throughout the ten tracks of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga the band presents its miraculously mesmerizing indie pop.

The Underdog (wma)

DaDa DaDa Dancing

Suzy sat on the college green. She was reading her economics text as best she could. It rarely made sense to her. But if she wanted to graduate she had to complete the class.

The sun was shining. It had barely begun to head to the western part of the sky. It was summer session at the university. Not a lot of students enrolled for the summer, but those that did often sat on the green in the afternoon. Some of the students were studying on this clear day. Some were lying out, getting a tan, and avoiding their schoolwork.

It was somewhere between supply and demand that Suzy got the distraction she needed. Two stereo speakers were placed in the window of a dorm adjacent to the green. The music was turned up extremely loud. And it was Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.

The excessively loud dorm room belonged to Eddie, who quickly ran out of the building and onto the green. He was only wearing his bathing suit, sunglasses, and a straw hat. He began running around the green. His movement might be described as dancing. In some ways it was to the rhythm of the Spoon album blasting through the air.

The album was on shuffle. The first song that Eddie gyrated to was “The Underdog.” There are three elements that made this song a fantastic pop song. The acoustic guitar was a unique combination of staccato and smooth strumming. There was a succulent horn chart. And there was a contagious rhythm with strong downbeats from a diverse range of percussion instruments – snare drum, occasionally thunderous toms, handclaps, and bells. Eddie threw his body around the college green and screamed along with the refrain. “That’s why you will not survive!”

Like most of the people on the green, Suzy’s attention was drawn to Eddie. Partly out of curiosity and partly in shock. There are a number of students who never do anything this unusual in the public venue of the college green. These people began chuckling as Eddie free form danced in the grass. Others, like Suzy, were vaguely intrigued. Here was someone who had the courage to dance in public. And he was dancing to a damn good album that had just been released.

As the next song played, “Don’t You Evah,” Suzy noticed that Eddie was passing out flyers as he twisted his body to the music. Spoon created some powerful dynamics. Instruments dropped out and built in perfect form. The bass and drums lay down a subtly scrupulous bed. The guitars layered some refined hypnotic riffs. The music dropped back to the bass and drums for the first verse. “Bet you got it all planned right/ Bet you never worry never even feel a fright.” Eddie passed out flyers in rhythm on the words “love” as Britt Daniel sang “Petals getting picked with the love you’s and the love you not’s.”

Suzy had the pleasure of seeing Spoon on tour for their last album, Gimme Fiction. Her impression was that sometimes Spoon played better versions of songs live. But they’ve made albums that work as a whole. The albums always flowed as a project. There are sparse parts of songs on their albums that wouldn’t work live, but they fit the sound of the album perfectly. And then their live show was a treat. The songs may sound a little different, fleshed out for a live setting. They knew how to craft the sounds of their songs for the presentation. This interpretation was reinstated with what she was hearing of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.

It was during “Don’t Make Me A Target” that Eddie danced his way towards Suzy. The guitars chopped out poignant riffs with distorted noise capping off the musical emotions. As the lyrics blasted “When you reach back in his mind/ Feels like he’s breaking the law/ There’s something back there he got/ That nobody knows,” Eddie’s flyer worked its way into Suzy’s hand.

“What is this?” she asked.

“It’s a manifesto of my impromptu dance movement."

“So you’re doing this as an art expression.”

“Fuck art. Fuck,” Eddie looked at Suzy’s textbook, “Economics. Fuck it all. It’s all a part of the problem. It’s all leading to destruction of society.”

“If everything is leading to the world’s doom, how do we stop it?”

“With chaos. Complete chaos. Everything about our culture needs to be demolished.” And Eddie danced away.

Suzy stood up and danced along with a few more Spoon songs. She heard Rob Pope’s bass line start “Rhthm & Soul” with a wallop. She swayed to the reverby piano riffs of “The Ghost Of You Lingers.” It was in the middle of “Eddie’s Ragga” that someone finally got into Eddie’s dorm room and pulled the plug on the music. The snare hit the upbeats with the guitar. The song continued to build as the last lyrics of the day resounded across the green. “She’d never been to Texas/ Never heard of King Kong/ It’s been so long since I’d been suitably high/ So we did an Airborne and settled in for the night.”

Suzy hoped to run in to Eddie again. Maybe they’d see each other at a bar. Maybe, if they were lucky, they trip the night away on some immune boosting herbal health medicine.

"The Underdog" video: