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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