Spoon are the kind of band that make inscrutably insular and compact groove-based rock music. That much is obvious. They’re the perfect band for the iPod generation, making these little vignettes that are tasty, sometimes sweet, sometimes savory, but always fitting to any mood. In an effort to try and divorce themselves from the neutrality they’ve come to represent, Spoon have tried changing up the pace on their latest LP, Transference (2010). Like the psychoanalytical terminology the title refers too, Spoon sound like the color of a therapists office - that off-white, almost benignly ugly color that neither calms, nor affirms your greatest fear. In their time-tested modus operandi, Spoon write the same 11 songs that they always do, though this time around they try and rewrite them in opposite order, but like anything that is the same through and through, it produces a similar result. Tick-tock rhythms and bedhead scratching lyrics about life, furniture, and getting older (but trying to stay hip) never sounded so… rote. The production remains sparse and time-oriented and while the inertia is intact, there is something slow and plodding about the whole record, lending to a feeling of glacial boredom in the music. Sometimes as bands age, they get better like a fine wine, but Spoon are expiring, a trait of a band that’s stuck to a formula for too long, though it has yet to be seen if that is a good or bad thing.
Download “Transference”
link