Spoon "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" (#10 DEBUT!)

[busyboy]

Spoon Reveal New Album Details

The men of Spoon will return to the world of releasing killer studio albums on July 10 with their sixth full-length. Merge will release the currently untitled album, and judging by the names of the record's ten songs, Britt Daniel was feeling a little feisty and very spelling-impaired: "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb", "Don't You Evah", "Rhthm and Soul", "Black Like Me" (?!).

We're also curious to see if "Eddie's Ragga" is indeed a ragga. If so, craziest Spoon record ever!

Spoon have a few U.S. shows this spring and summer to tide over the anxious masses, and they are planning a full tour for the fall.

Tracklist:

01 Don't Make Me a Target
02 The Ghost of You Lingers
03 You Got Yr Cherry Bomb
04 Don't You Evah
05 Rhthm and Soul
06 Eddie's Ragga
07 The Underdog
08 My Little Japanese Cigarette Case
09 Finer Feelings
10 Black Like Me

Dates:

04-13 Grinnell, IA - Harris Center (Grinnell College)
04-21 Baltimore, MD - Sonar (Main Room)
04-22 Philadelphia, PA - Starlight Ballroom
04-24 Asbury Park, NJ - Stone Pony
04-26 New Haven, CT - Toad's Place
04-27 Northampton, MA - Pearl Street
04-28 Boston, MA - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
05-27 George, WA - Gorge Amphitheatre (Sasquatch! Festival)
06-16 Manchester, TN - Bonnaroo Music Festival
07-04 Detroit, MI - Comerica CityFest

www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/41899-spoon-reveal-new-album-details,!

[busyboy]

I simply loved "I Turned My Camera On" off their last 2005 album. I have to admit I never got around to listen to them that much, but there are still 3+ months until the new one, a reasonable time to catch up.

[joker]

I know Spoon has been around for awhile, but "Gimme Fiction" is the only music I own of theirs. I like it enough to keep this upcoming album on my radar.

[busyboy]

Spoon Shows Its 'Soul' On Sixth Album

March 26, 2007, 11:50 AM ET

Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.

Spoon has set a July 10 release date for its as-yet-untitled new album, which, in tandem with the Arcade Fire's "Neon Bible," will constitute the most high-profile one-two punch in Merge Records' history.

The 10-track set is the follow-up to 2005's "Gimme Fiction," which has sold a career-best 158,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Tracks confirmed for the album include the live favorite "Don't Make Me a Target" and the curiously spelled "Rhthm And Soul" and "Don't You Evah." Spoon will support the project with some East Coast shows in April and sets at the Sasquatch and Bonnaroo festivals this summer. A longer North American tour will begin in the fall.

www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003562835

[joker]

Watch Spoon perform two new tracks live at SXSW

[roentgenizdat]

Spoon Announce New Album Title: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

[friend]

Spoon is an awesome band! I might actually get their new album.

[busyboy]

Spoon Record With Jon Brion, Party With Flavor Flav

As you prepare to go ga-ga and then some over the new Spoon album, know this: a certain instrument-hopping showman extraordinaire known as Jon Brion has produced one of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga's tracks.

No, it's not "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb", nor "Don't You Evah", nor "Black Like Me". It's the most boringly-titled track on the disc: "The Underdog". Seriously, guys, given the other titles, "The Underdawg" wouldn't have been overdoing it. But anyway.

Longtime Spoon producer Mike McCarthy (Gimme Fiction, Kill the Moonlight, Girls Can Tell) helmed the rest of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga's ten tracks. The album hits the streets July 10 via Merge.

In tangentially related news: Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.

Spoon find their own flavor of love on a short U.S. tour that kicks off late next month.

Live Spooning:
04-13 Grinnell, IA - Harris Center (Grinnell College)
04-21 Baltimore, MD - Sonar (Main Room)
04-22 Philadelphia, PA - Starlight Ballroom
04-24 Asbury Park, NJ - Stone Pony
04-26 New Haven, CT - Toad's Place
04-27 Northampton, MA - Pearl Street
04-28 Boston, MA - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
05-27 George, WA - Gorge Amphitheatre (Sasquatch! Festival)
06-16 Manchester, TN - Bonnaroo Music Festival
07-04 Detroit, MI - Comerica CityFest

www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/41980-spoon-record-with-jon-brion-party-with-flavor-flav

[busyboy]

Spoon, New Pornographers Rock The 'River'

April 05, 2007, 2:35 PM ET
Katie Hasty, N.Y.

Acts like Spoon, Booker T. & the MGs, Drive-By Truckers, the New Pornographers and Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings have signed on for the summer-long River to River concert series in New York.

The sixth annual event is free and open to the public, with presentations hosted at a number of lower Manhattan destinations like Battery Park, the World Financial Center and the South Street Seaport.

Other highlights include Battles, Menomena, Ron Sexsmith, Fujiya & Miyagi, Shearwater, Charansalsa, soprano singer Elizabeth Keusch, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, John Pizzarelli and Paula West, Martha Wainwright, Chris Thile, Jim Campilongo and Roky Erickson & the Explosives.

Events kick off the weekend of June 1 and run through September, with some performances requiring, albeit free, tickets. Dance troupes, children's fairs, fireworks and visual artists are on the River to River calendar.

www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003567928

[busyboy]

Spoon Add "Secret" Shows to Tour
Britt Daniel plays solo for charity

Pitchfork researchers are hard at work trying to unlock the mysteries of Spoon's new album, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. We're tackling the tough questions, like "Is that title for real?" (yes) and "So, like, did someone in the band just have a baby?" (apparently not).

We've also cracked the super secret (read: you have to sign up) Spoon mailing list and found information about some "secret" shows on the band's schedule. First up is an April 23 show in New York City with David Vandervelde and the Moonstation House Band.

Then, not so secretly, on May 7, Britt Daniel will play a solo show in Seattle as part of a muscular dystrophy benefit. Proceeds from the show will go to Charley's Fund, an organization that gives grants to muscular dystrophy researchers.

More "secret" Spoon shows are in the works, so put an online wiretap on that aforementioned mailing list for that information.

Dates:

04-21 Baltimore, MD - Sonar
04-22 Philadelphia, PA - Starlight Ballroom
04-23 New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom *
04-24 Asbury Park, NJ - Stone Pony
04-26 New Haven, CT - Toad's Place
04-27 Northampton, MA - Pearl Street *
04-28 Boston, MA - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
05-07 Seattle, WA - Crocodile Cafe (Britt Daniel solo) #
05-27 George, WA - Gorge Amphitheatre (Sasquatch! Festival)
06-16 Manchester, TN - Bonnaroo
07-04 Detroit, MI - Comerica CityFest
07-11 New York, NY - Battery Park (River to River)
08-04 Chicago, IL - Grant Park (Lollapalooza)

* with David Vandervelde and the Moonstation House Band
# with Joel RL Phelps

[nucker]

Gimme Fiction is an awesome album so I can't wait to hear what they have in store for us with this new one.

[busyboy]

Album cover

[busyboy]

"Don't You Evah" live at SXSW.

[busyboy]

"The Ghost Of You Lingers".

[roentgenizdat]

BOOKED: Spoon - Keven McAlester, director

artist: Spoon
song: "The Underdog"
label: Merge
director(s): Keven McAlester
production co: Ghost Robot
rep: Jill Kaplan/Skyway Productions

[busyboy]

Leaked!

[winner2000]

I DLed this a few days ago...it's surprisingly REALLY good! Better than GF for sure...there's lots of potential singles on this album. Too bad the U.S. will probably ignore it :-\

[busyboy]

Spoon Augment Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga With Bonus EP
Put us, them, and the Knife together, and you've got yourself a dinette set

Anticipation is running high for Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, which is still curiously named, and still hitting shelves July 10 from Merge. Chalk up all the folks going ga-ga in the pre-release frenzy to the efforts of the tireless Texan tunesmiths, who are out, as always, fighting the good fight for hyphen-free indie rock n roll. The underdogs have a smattering of live dates on deck for the summer, setting off tonight in San Francisco.

Though their sound is graciously gimmick-free, their rollout of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is rife with 'em. Not that we're complaining, given the quality of the schwag. Visitors to Spoon's online store can slide their slender frames into a "surprise" new t-shirt, designed by Britt Daniel himself, and the first pressing of Ga will come bundled with Get Nice!, a twelve-track, 22-minute EP packed with new jams, instrumental cuts, and a few early spins through Spoon classics past and future. We've been assured that Ga highlight "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb" and Gimme Fiction centerpiece "I Summon You" are the only Get Nice! tracks anyone's ever heard before. Nice!

That generous streak continues at Spoon's dual Portland gigs over the weekend. Dubbed "The Spoon Spring '07 Awareness Benefit Stand", the shows feature the band facetiously throwing their weight (and any scraps of wood) behind the Salvation Army and Sea Otter Conservation League of America. Only, not really. An email from the band reads:

"Canned good and timber donations accepted at the door. Requests to be considered after each show."

Jokers.

Spoonful:

05-24 San Francisco, CA - Popscene
05-25 Portland, OR - Doug Fir
05-26 Portland, OR - Doug Fir
05-27 George, WA - Gorge Amphitheatre (Sasquatch! Festival)
06-10 San Diego, CA - KZBT Independence Jam
06-16 Manchester, TN - Bonnaroo
06-29 Calgary, Alberta - Sled Island Festival
07-04 Detroit, MI - Comerica CityFest
07-11 New York, NY - Battery Park (River to River)
08-04 Chicago, IL - Grant Park (Lollapalooza)
08-05 Baltimore, MD - Virgin Festival
09-14-16 Austin, TX - Zilker Park (Austin City Limits Festival)

[roentgenizdat]

Spoon Sign to Anti- in UK and Europe

Spoon are still planning to unleash their five Ga attack on the U.S. on July 10, but now they're perfectly set up for the tactical deployment of their new album in the UK, Europe, and Australia as well. The UK/European release on July 9 comes courtesy of the band's signing to Anti- Records -- home to Tom Waits, Neko Case, Nick Cave, and more -- for distribution there, and the Australian release (July 7) will be on Spoon's previous Aussie label, Spunk.

Spoon are still very much on Merge in North America, though, and they have set up a website with the label to stream a new song from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga every day until June 15, when each song will be individually streamable. The record's first three songs ("Don't Make Me a Target", "The Ghost of You Lingers", and "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb") are up now.


Spoon Add U.S., Canadian Dates in Early Fall

Bless their hearts, they don't give us much choice; though they're still -- despite a dim-lit, bug-eyed love for the Knife -- our favorite band named after a piece of kitchen bric-a-brac, Spoon don't leave us much choice when it comes to the awful Friday afternoon puns. Another day has gone by, and another batch of tour dates have been Spoon-fed to us by the amicable Austinite amblers. Flip that calender a few times, Vancouver, for you're the first of a half-dozen new dates announced today.

In other Spoon news, they've got a fine record with a funny name comin' at North American July 10 from Merge, Europe July 9 from Anti-, and two days before that in Australia from Spunk. Before then, they'll offer their eight hands in support of freedom Sunday evening, taking the stage at Chula Vista, California's KZBT Independence Jam. The freedom to rock, that is!

Spoon!:

06-10 Chula Vista, CA - KZBT Independence Jam
06-16 Manchester, TN - Bonnaroo
06-29 Calgary, Alberta - Sled Island Festival
07-04 Detroit, MI - Comerica CityFest
07-05 Milwaukee, WI - Summerfest
07-11 New York, NY - Rockefeller Park (River to River)
08-04 Chicago, IL - Grant Park (Lollapalooza)
08-05 Baltimore, MD - Virgin Festival
08-10 Oslo, Norway - Øya Festival
08-11 Gothenburg, Sweden - Way Out West
08-12 Leicester, England - Summer Sundae Weekender
08-14 Paredes de Coura, Portugal - Paredes de Coura Festival
08-16 London, England - Cargo
08-17 Hasselt, Belgium - Pukkelpop Festival
09-07 Vancouver, British Columbia
09-10 Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre
09-11 Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre
09-14-16 Austin, TX - Zilker Park (Austin City Limits Festival)
10-10 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue
10-15 Toronto, Ontario - Phoenix Concert Theatre
10-20 New York, NY - Roseland Ballroom

[busyboy]

Spoon Add a Few More Dates

Ah, Spoon, how we enjoy this game of push and pull. You tell us everything there is to know about Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, then you tell us we'll have to wait 'til the second week of July to pick it up. You let us hear the album piece by piece, then stream it in full, but you still won't let us hold it in our lovin' arms just yet.

And you schedule tour dates, rewarding some while forcing others to make elaborate travel plans, and then you schedule some more. You tease, but we just keep lapping it up.

The Spoonmen have thrown a few more dates at us, including stops in Philly and Detroit, and at fests like San Fran's Treasure Island, Portland's MusicFest NW, Del Mar, Cali's Street Scene, and NOLA's Voodoo Music Experience. Of course, they weren't exactly lacking for live opportunities before. But when the merchants of soul ask to play for you, you just let 'em, you know?

You can go go go go go get Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga July 10 in the US from Merge, July 9 from Anti- in Europe, and July 7 from Spunk in Australia.

Spoon:

06-29 Calgary, Alberta - Sled Island Festival
07-04 Detroit, MI - Comerica CityFest
07-05 Milwaukee, WI - Summerfest
07-11 New York, NY - Rockefeller Park (River to River)
07-28 Seattle, WA - Capitol Hill Block Party
08-02 Chicago, IL - Grant Park Petrillo Band Shell (GALApalooza)
08-04 Chicago, IL - Grant Park (Lollapalooza)
08-05 Baltimore, MD - Virgin Festival
08-10 Oslo, Norway - Øya Festival
08-11 Gothenburg, Sweden - Way Out West
08-12 Leicester, England - Summer Sundae Weekender
08-14 Paredes de Coura, Portugal - Paredes de Coura Festival
08-16 London, England - Cargo
08-17 Hasselt, Belgium - Pukkelpop Festival
09-06 Portland, OR - MusicFest NW
09-07 Vancouver, British Columbia
09-10 Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre
09-11 Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre
09-14 Austin, TX - Zilker Park (Austin City Limits Festival)
09-15 Morrison, CO - Red Rocks Amphitheatre (Monolith Festival)
09-16 San Francisco, CA - Treasure Island Festival
09-17 Vancouver, British Columbia - Commodore Ballroom
09-22-23 Del Mar, California - Del Mar Fairgrounds (Street Scene)
10-10 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue
10-11 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue
10-13 Detroit, MI - Majestic
10-15 Toronto, Ontario - Phoenix Concert Theatre
10-19 Philadelphia, PA - Electric
10-20 New York, NY - Roseland Ballroom
10-26-28 New Orleans, LA - City Park (Voodoo Music Experience)

MP3: Spoon: The Underdog

[busyboy]

Spoon discuss new album
The band gear up for summer festivals

Spoon have finished recording their new album, 'Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga', which is due to be released July 9 in the UK and a day later in the US.

NME.COM caught up with frontman Britt Daniel, who divulged some of the challenges of recording the follow-up to 2005's 'Gimme Fiction'.

"I live in Portland but we made the album in Austin where the rest of the band lives, and it was a long time to be sleeping on the futon in the studio without a home," Daniel said.

"Also the intensity of what I was going through, like breaking up with my girlfriend and being away from home, fed into what the whole album was. But In the end I'm glad it happened the way it did -- I do feel like it's the best record we've made," he admitted.

Daniel said that the album is about heartache, love, politics and personal experience.

"(Opening track) 'Don't Make Me A Target' is about talking to the big guy in charge, and telling him, 'Don't make things worse than they already are,'" Daniel explained.

Production duties on the album were handled by long-time producer Mike McCarthy.

"It's our fourth time working with the grumpy old wizard," Daniel said of McCarthy. "He's quite a character, but he's very talented."

Daniel said that he and the band made the decision to go for a rougher, rawer sound than on the band's previous albums. "We left in the rough edges. We made the album to sound pleasing to us, but we hope more people will hear it than the one before."

Spoon are gearing up to play several US and European festivals this summer, including Lollapalooza in Chicago and Norway's Oya Festival, before returning Stateside to play a handful of club dates.

"It should be cool to play the festivals in Norway and Calgary, because I've never been there before," said Daniel. "And I think we're playing at a couple of festivals with LCD Soundsystem -- that'll be a blast. I've never seen them before and I love their last record. But I'm really looking forward to doing the smaller club shows after the festivals."

[busyboy]

"The Underdog" video.

[Wavey✨️]

Album is going to be shipping 130k:
www.hitsdailydouble.com/vibe/vibe.cgi?rank16

[areyoureadytojump]

Out today in the USA!!

[busyboy]

Spoon Keep Expanding Tour With "Secret" Shows

Today's U.S. release of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga on Merge completes the first piece of Spoon's plan for world domination. The next piece involves touring, and lot of it.

And their previously reported tour now involves a few semi-exclusive "secret" shows complete with hoops for jumping through in order to obtain tickets to them.

The first of these shows is an in-store at New York City's Union Square Virgin Megastore in about an hour. So hurry up and get there, New Yorkers!

Spoon then have two NYC shows tomorrow (July 11), one of which is an appearance on CBS' "Late Show With David Letterman". The other is a performance at the River to River Festival.

Next up is a show at Chicago's Schubas on July 13. Tickets to this show are available in three ways. 1) You can win them from Chicago radio station WXRT. 2) You can enter to win them by buying Ga at Reckless Records today. 3) You can win them through your subscription to the Spoon mailing list.

The very next day (July 14), the band will play a similar show at Café Du Nord in San Francisco. Again, tickets can be obtained in three ways. 1) Win 'em from KFOG. 2) Do the record store thing through a July 10 (today) purchase of the record at Amoeba Music. 3) Get to the venue really early the day of the show to get one of a few tickets on hold there.

Finally, Los Angeles residents will have their chance at a "secret" show with a 7-10 Ga Ga purchase at their own Amoeba. That show takes place July 16 at Little Radio.

To sum up, if you live in one of our nation's biggest cities, buy Spoon's new record today for a chance to see them at a fairly intimate location. Everybody else will be (happily) stuck with the rest of their tour, which begins July 28 in Seattle.

Oh, and Australian dates are on the way.

Dates:

07-10 New York, NY - Virgin Megastore (Union Square) (in-store)
07-11 New York, NY - Rockefeller Park (River to River)
07-13 Chicago, IL - Schubas
07-14 San Francisco, CA - Café Du Nord *
07-16 Los Angeles, CA - Little Radio #
07-28 Seattle, WA - Capitol Hill Block Party
08-02 Chicago, IL - Grant Park Petrillo Band Shell (GALApalooza)
08-04 Chicago, IL - Grant Park (Lollapalooza)
08-05 Baltimore, MD - Virgin Festival
08-10 Oslo, Norway - Øya Festival
08-11 Gothenburg, Sweden - Way Out West
08-12 Leicester, England - Summer Sundae Weekender
08-14 Paredes de Coura, Portugal - Paredes de Coura Festival
08-16 London, England - Cargo
08-17 Hasselt, Belgium - Pukkelpop Festival
09-06 Portland, OR - MusicFest NW
09-07 Vancouver, British Columbia - Commodore Ballroom
09-08 Victoria, British Columbia - Sugar
09-10 Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre
09-11 Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre
09-14 Austin, TX - Zilker Park (Austin City Limits Festival)
09-15 Morrison, CO - Red Rocks Amphitheatre (Monolith Festival)
09-16 San Francisco, CA - Treasure Island Festival
09-17 Vancouver, British Columbia - Commodore Ballroom
09-22-23 Del Mar, California - Del Mar Fairgrounds (Street Scene)
10-10 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue
10-11 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue
10-13 Detroit, MI - Majestic
10-15 Toronto, Ontario - Phoenix Concert Theatre
10-19 Philadelphia, PA - Electric Factory
10-20 New York, NY - Roseland Ballroom
10-24 Asheville, NC - The Orange Peel
10-26 Nashville, TN - Cannery Ballroom
10-27-28 New Orleans, LA - City Park (Voodoo Music Experience)
11-01 Houston, TX - Warehouse Live ^

* with Rogue Wave
# with John Vanderslice
^ with the New Pornographers, Emma Pollock

[busyboy]

Spoon
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
[Merge; 2007]
Rating: 8.5

Prior to the release of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, online buzz suggested Spoon's sixth record was a grower, a distinction also conferred upon the Austin band's two previous albums, each more experimental (and at times alienating) than its predecessor. That optimistic adjective-- which incorporates both the listener's failure to quickly grasp a record as well as a hope to eventually do so-- feels exceedingly appropriate for Spoon, who have cultivated an intense fan base while continuing to experiment (the frequent comparisons to Wilco are indeed apt in this case).

A large contingent of Spoon's following has come from Britt Daniel's continual knack for, as he sang on 1998's "Metal Detektor", making "the sound of getting kicked when you're down." If any song were to be the quintessential Spoon pop single, then, the radiant, Jon Brion-produced "The Underdog", a Cliff's Notes encapsulation of Spoon's earnest compassion for the fucked-over, is it. With a three-piece brass fanfare, "Underdog" is a battle cry against succumbing to mediocrity masquerading as a middle finger to the standard-bearers: The lyric "Get free from the middle man" could also read: "Get free from the middle, man." Likewise, the slinky "Don't You Evah" (a cover of an unreleased song by former tourmates the Natural History) affirms Spoon's trend toward emotional trusses for the fairer sex, recalling Gimme Fiction's "They Never Got You" and Kill the Moonlight's "Don't Let It Get You Down". A different directive occurs on opener "Don't Make Me a Target", however, which revisits the obscurantist personal politicizing that many thought marked Fiction's "My Mathematical Mind". With a few well-chosen phrases-- "Here come a man from the star...Beating his drum...Nuclear dicks with their dialect drawls," both victim and perpetrator become crystal clear.

Ga Ga travels past in a flash-- at 36 minutes, it returns to the brief runtime that Fiction well surpassed-- but leaves plenty of reasons to revisit. Daniel and producer/drummer Jim Eno's tendencies toward studio-based devilry come full-flower here, each listen revealing craftsmen reveling in detail. What in lesser hands could be extra-textual gobbledygook instead feels the product of studio freestyling, something to which the murky mixing-board wizardry of Jamaican dub is an obvious precursor. Penultimate song "Finer Feelings" is one bit of proof, its wide-open guitars-- straight from Sandinista!-- augmented with a sampled toast from (Clash collaborator) Mikey Dread's "Industrial Spy". With the addition of echoed ambiance from a Brussels fair field recording, "Feelings" acquires the aura of a surreal Kingston sound system.

Earlier, "Evah"'s introduction dips into the self-referentiality the band flirted with on Fiction, featuring a diced-up, looped Daniel asking Eno to record his studio talkback. Two songs later, all manner of discordance enters and exits the reverb-heavy mix of the appropriately titled "Eddie's Ragga", which developed from a jam session with Eddie Robert of Daniel-produced Austinites I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness. Ga Ga's most intriguing sonic creation, however, is the song which takes the dub influence in the furthest direction: "The Ghost of You Lingers". A return to Moonlight's spooky sonic variegation, "Ghost"'s pounding, echoed piano feels like a merged memory of the jabbed guitar from "Small Stakes" with "Paper Tiger"'s moody expressionism. Daniel's unmistakable voice is a distant, gothic wail here, as he mourns his missing love with characteristic jargon: "We put on a clinic/ If you were here would you calm me down or settle the score."

Daniel's gift for non-mawkish romanticism results in both Ga Ga's best moments, and three of the best songs the band has yet create. Especially on Girls Can Tell, Spoon's always flirted with straight-up blue-eyed soul, and "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb" is their full-on take-off of Elvis Costello's Motown M.O. on Get Happy! (perhaps purposefully, then, the album's bonus disc is titled Get Nice!). Backed by an irresistible Holland-Dozier-Holland gospel-pop-stomp, "Cherry Bomb" re-imagines the heart/sleeve cliché as a vivid bicep tattoo, as Daniel implores his love to three-point-turn and chill out. Ga Ga's real bang happens at its close, however, with the one-two send-off of "Feelings" and "Black Like Me". The former, which ostensibly documents a Memphis-based isolation, features a handclap-accompanied chorus as energized and unremittingly hopeful as Daniel's ever been: "Sometimes I think that I'll find a love/ One that's gonna change my heart/ I'll find it in Commercial Appeal/ And then this heartache'll get chased away."

"Black"'s melodic melancholy-- backed by a weeping piano/guitar motif that recalls Let it Bleed-- is simply gorgeous. Has Daniel ever written a lyric more crushing in its confused simplicity than "I'm in need of someone to take care of me tonight"? Rather than attempt to relate with someone who's already taken leave, he splits, and so, apparently, does his mind. During the internalized call-and-response that follows, he appeals: "All the weird kids up front/ Tell me what you know you want." Thus, at the end of his emotional rope, he crosses the fourth wall and reveals the aching coda as a mutually lived performance.

With Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Spoon have once again found a gray area between the poles of pop accessibility and untested studio theorizing, modifying a formula that has grown to feel familiar even as it wanders, and refusing to square the circle while doing so. Through whatever process they use, the band has also managed to create yet another wonderfully singular indie rock record, unafraid of unfettered passion or self-sabotage, and which affirms a shrouded, hybrid style as unquestionably theirs. Perhaps it is fitting to refer to Ga Ga, and Spoon albums on the whole, as growers, then, but with a different definition: one that takes into account the bands continual, and continually rewarding, approach to creative maturation.

-Eric Harvey, July 11, 2007

[jaxxalude]

Live: Spoon Blows the f**k Up
posted: 4:49 PM, July 12, 2007 by Tom Breihan

Tom Breihan is GOD!

[reception]

Reviewed by Edna Gundersen
USA Today

Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga: * * * (out of four) Triggers ga-ga reflex

With its broad spectrum of sonics funneled into a streamlined rush of ballad-free spark and whoosh, Spoon’s sixth album is a rare combination of economy and imagination as well as a tidy summation of the Austin band’s strengths. Spiffy melodies, thudding bass, clapping hands and rare embellishments sprint efficiently alongside Britt Daniel’s crisp narratives. The only superfluous ingredients on this album are the three extra words in the infantile title. You’ll go ga-ga over the rest.

[roentgenizdat]

Billboard.biz: Spoon scoops up a No. 10 debut on The Billboard 200 with "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" selling 46,000 in its first week. It's the band's sixth full-length effort, but only its second to chart, following 2005's "Gimme Fiction." That set peaked at No. 44 when it debuted with 20,000. The band also scores its second No. 1 on the Top Independent Albums chart with "Ga," as "Gimme" also debuted at No. 1 on that list in 2005. The band's Billboard chart history dates back to March 10, 2001, when "Girls Can Tell" bowed on the Independent Albums chart.


AV Club interviews Britt Daniel

[roentgenizdat]

07/28: NEW 10 SPOON GA GA GA GA GA 46,190 231 46,421