Spoon- 'Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga'
(Merge, 2007)
Rating: 9

Spoon have always floated somewhere in the ether between indie demagoguery and straight ahead R&B influenced rock and rolldom with an omnipresent willingness for experimentation and a blurring of the aesthetic lines that they continually cross. The band's refusal to plant their conceptual flag on either side of such a demarcation has provided them the opportunity to evolve into a musical entity that allows for a fervent core following while keeping the mainstream hordes at arms length. Having begun as an almost de facto Pixies cover unit, the Austin natives have come to value the nuanced over the anthemic, and their latest release again features their knack for playing to their past strengths while hinting at new ones.

Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga finds Britt Daniel's breathy rasp and surprisingly evocative falsetto in place, as his vocal stylings evoke a less acerbic David Lowery mixed with a touch of Elvis Costello and precharicature Billy Joel. Daniel's voice offers a peculiar mix of weariness and resolve that is reflected in the thematic choices he makes throughout the album, as he veers from subtextually political opines directed at a fellow Long Star native (Don't Make Me A Target) to more intrinsically personal comings and goings. As with previous efforts, Daniel deftly avoids any navel-gazing overkill while striking a balance between his heartfelt and wry extremes. Having opened the album with his presidential salvo in which he sings of "nuclear dicks with their dialect drawls", the frontman strikes his most resonant chord on the elegiac ode to melancholia Black Like Me when he plaintively states "I'm in need of someone to take care of me tonight." It's always a ballsy move to finish with your strongest track, but Spoon punctuates this record with the kind of doubleshot in album closer Black Like Me and its preceding track, the free flowing Finer Feelings, that propels this record into the kind of rarified air Spoon's devotees have been waiting for since the band's first sonic missives. The whirring guitar lines and counterpuncturally juxtaposed layers of horns, keyboards, and even the occasional xylophone provide the entire album with a stereophonic sheen that screams for a premium set of earphones/speakers and a sufficiently rainy day. The album is filled with lush multi-instrumental melodies that imbue it with a lavish ambience that masterfully flirts with sensory overload while somehow keeping itself in check.

In crafting their latest release, Spoon have given their fans not only a reminder of how far the band has come since its inception but a tantalizing glimpse into new boundaries ripe for testing. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga features what is arguably the band's foremost foray into overt pop-rock with You Got Yr Cherry Bomb, a barely three minute firecracker of unabashed pop delirium poured over a rhythm and blues groove that allows the band to rejoice in its most urgent populist urges. The track represents a new benchmark for the group in terms of accessibility while still mining the influences that have served them so well up to this point in their career. For all of their previous experimentation, Cherry Bomb comes off as perversely and inversely a curveball as Spoon have ever tossed and suggests that though the band is at a point where the sublimation of their methods has given them a palpable and supreme self-confidence in their artistic process, there are more facets of their being that can and should be explored if not fully fleshed out. Whether it's honing their pop instincts or simply plugging in and letting their more shambolic overtures emerge, Spoon has reached the enviable position whereby they can alternately return to form and map out a not so distant future with equally engrossing results.

-Brant Miles