Minimalism and Melody

By Josh Tyrangiel

There's a perfect song on Gimme Fiction, the new album from the chronically underrated Austin, Texas, rock band Spoon. It's called I Summon You, and its narcotic powers are such that only after you have pressed the repeat button for the sixth or seventh time will it occur to you that there's not a single original thing about it. I Summon You involves a guy, a girl and a long drive. It's played at a wistful but assured mid-tempo on guitar, bass, drums and keyboards. The chorus goes, "Aww no, where are you tonight?" If your record collection takes up more than a shelf, you already own a dozen variations of this song--and you'll need this one too. It sounds old and feels new, and it's a reminder that in the right hands the most familiar things in rock 'n' roll--three chords, four instruments and an aching heart--still have magic powers.

Spoon, which is mostly singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Britt Daniel, along with drummer Jim Eno (although friends drop by to help out on this release), has made four satisfyingly simple albums since 1998, but Gimme Fiction marks a high point in the group's unfussy minimalism. I Turn My Camera On is so basic that someone receives a credit for finger snapping--and deserves it. Yet the bass groove at its core is buoyant and hooky enough on its own to create what could be the first disco chain-gang song. They Never Got You starts with another bass riff before adding drums, a Moog synthesizer and viola so judiciously that you hardly realize they're there. The power pop of Sister Jack breaks for a hysterically grimy guitar solo that stops cold at the last verse, like a guard dog at an electric fence; nothing on Gimme Fiction is allowed to get in the way of melody. There are a few subtle effects--a tape loop ticking away like a lawn sprinkler on the ecstatic My Mathematical Mind, some buried studio chatter elsewhere--but they help give the album the artful artlessness of an untucked shirt.

The final understated touch is Daniel's singing. Most of the songs appear to be about love, or a lack of it, although his lyrics are pretty vague. ("I'm looking through you/ You know who you are," he offers on My Mathematical Mind.) When something as generic as "I got a feelin' it didn't come free/ I got a feelin' and then it got to me" floats by, you might wonder a bit about his depth, but in Daniel's dry croak, generalities and absurdities seem to take on meaning. He sounds a bit like Paul Westerberg, but Daniel's irony stems from an excess of feeling, not an absence of it (think of the difference between Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum), and his cadence makes words feel hard earned and universal. Being beaten down by love is an old act, of course, but then so is rock 'n' roll. Gimme Fiction has an amazing way of making both feel new. --By Josh Tyrangiel