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By now, it may come off a bit clichéd stating that the darlings
of the indie rock scene," Spoon, consistently put out good
records. Nevertheless, at the risk of saying something hackneyed or redundant,
I am pleased to report that Spoon has, with the release of Ga Ga Ga
Ga Ga, given the world of music one goddamned great album. Spoon (Britt
Daniel, Jim Eno, Eric Harvey and Rob Pope) smash
their influences like an unsupervised ornery kid wrecks his sister's favorite
doll with a hammer; then when the destruction is absolute, they pick up
the pieces and reshape the shards into music that surpasses exceptions
set upon it by the music press, aficionados of "challenging rock"
and hipsters.
The Austin, Texas natives combine seemingly unrelated musical styles;
everything from Manfred Mann And His Earth Band to The Memphis
Horns, World Party, and much to my distain, the late 1970's
stylings of the piano man himself, Billy Joel. Case in point, track
seven of Ga, a superb tune named "The Underdog", ( the
only track produced by producer dejour Jon Brion ) carries basically
the same tempo and changes as the Joel classic, "Only The Good Die
Young."
What makes this album run away from the pack is Spoon's complete lack
of fear and their ability as musicians to make the record that they wanted
to make. Over the span of a decade, six full-length albums, an ep or two
and several split singles, Spoon have pushed the envelope with their music,
subsequently forcing other bands to cut the crap and make solid records
or be left in the dust. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is an album that any real
lover of music would want and should hear. It is exciting, at least to
me, to experience a band that obviously worries less about whether or
not their single is played on mainstream radio and more about their fans
and the discussions that the songs will inevitably incite. It's wonderful
to know that, after experiencing some mediocre at best music of late,
there are a few bands left out there that actually give a shit about the
music that they write, perform and record. Now that "indie"
rock is no longer underground and the indie labels are being devoured
by the major labels at an alarming rate, many bands on the scene now apparently
worry more about their outfits (see Interpol) or their facial hair
(see The Killers.)
Driven through witty lyrics, songs like "Don't Make Me A Target",
the spooky "The Ghost Of You Lingers", the funky "Rhythm
And Soul", and the out and out strange "My Little Japanese Cigarette
Case", Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is one of only a handful of albums this
year that will make supposed giants in the alternative/indie music world,
like for instance, the overrated Shins and the Bob-Dylan-wish-I-was-Conor-Oberst
shit their "too cool for you" pants.
-Danny R. Phillips
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