I got to believe it come from rock and roll
Spoon
Gimme Fiction (Merge)

by Marc Hirsh

originally published in the Baltimore City Paper, May 11, 2005

On its last album, 2002’s excellent Kill The Moonlight, Spoon conducted what sounded like a caged-in series of mad-scientist studio experiments on Britt Daniel’s skewed pop songs. The band opts for a different direction on Gimme Fiction, creating a distinct sense of physical space and generating an impression of a working, breathing band. It’s no small irony, then, that that’s just an illusion created by a band stripped down to just two members, drummer Jim Eno and Daniel, who handles more or less everything else with minimal outside contributions.

It’s hard to argue with the results, though, as Gimme Fiction is a stronger record than its predecessor, though it’s not necessarily better. Spoon jacks up the emphasis on rhythm as Eno drives the dead-simple collapsed beat of “I Turn My Camera On,” the skipalong “They Never Got You” and “Was It You?,” which sounds like the Gap Band embracing the sparseness of early New Wave. Daniel’s own go-for-broke approach litters Gimme Fiction with spitfire noise guitar and orchestrates the churning piano tempest of “My Mathematical Mind” (one of the album’s few full-band performances). Best of all is the opener, the deliberate “The Beast And Dragon, Adored,” which nicks the drums from CCR’s “Long As I Can See The Light,” processes them with echo for hypnotic effect and marries the result to Daniel’s voice, a congested cross between fellow Austinite Davíd Garza and Liam Gallagher, as the piano chords he pounds out are left to decay in the air.

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