20 best spoon songs (20-16)

Let’s be honest: Spoon are a one-trick pony. But what a trick it is. Stripped/minimal/nude: use whatever words you want, but that’s Spoon’s game. Their songs rank somewhere between Nicole Ritchie and Calista Flockheart on the meaty scale. In 11 years, the band has steadily evolved and mutated this sound, graduating from Just Another Matador Band to the indie band everyone can love.

It wasn’t an easy road. There was an ill-fated major label stint, some definite missteps and a whole lot of touring. But that has paid off: after five albums, Spoon have sold more than 440,000 records, a pretty astonishing number, especially when you look back to where they were when their debut, Telephono, dropped in 1996: a Texas band coming up during indie rock’s death knell with a generic name and an overly familiar sound. The band has certainly matured and improved, but even more so the audience has changed. Indie is big, and Spoon have been in a perfect place to receive their just dues. By all means they deserve it.

Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Spoon’s sixth album, comes out Tuesday, July 10. In honor of the occasion, we’re counting down Spoon’s 20 best moments, five at a time, culminating with the top five picks on Tuesday. Hope you dig it.

20 “Chicago at Night” | Girls Can Tell

“Chicago at Night” was written during Spoon’s earliest days, a relic from 1996 (or earlier), the band’s noisier Telephono years. Ironic, then, that it’s among the band’s most saccharine numbers, the melody clinging and soft, singer Britt Daniel wistful and melancholy. You can actually hear Daniel’s first demo of the song on the Drake Tungsten (a name he recorded two EPs under, both just curiosities) EP Six Pence for the Sauces. The Girls Can Tell version is unquestionably better, however. There’s a nice little muffled vocal effect that mimics the original (including a little vocoder), and it’s one of Spoon’s most plainly pretty recordings.

Here’s a homemade video that includes the song:

19 “The Ghost of You Lingers” | Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

The lead single to Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, “The Ghost of You Lingers” is definitely one of the most distinctive Spoon songs the band has recorded so far. It’s reminiscent of Steve Reich’s classic Music for 18 Musicians (and, more recently, parts of LCD Soundsystem’s 45:33, an obvious Reich/modernist classical homage) with its vertical notes pulsating rapidly, in this instance a blend of piano, guitar, keyboard, bass and maybe a couple more instruments as well. Daniel’s voice enters the song like a memory, an obvious inspiration for the song title, spitting out lines hurriedly in a falsetto, slipping from channel to channel like a specter. The reaction to the song was pretty confused when “Ghost” was first released (and count me in the non-plussed camp at first), but it’s a real grower. Related: when Joe interviewed Britt last week, he asked him what his favorite Spoon songs were, and Britt named this in his top three.

18 “I Summon You” | Gimme Fiction

Another self-confessed favorite by Britt. “I Summon You” is a great sounding song; it was recorded incredibly well, Rob Pope’sthe bass really pumping and the acoustic guitar particularly forceful. The production really emphasizes this, with Daniel’s voice being mixed on an equal level with all of the other instrumentation, even the tambourine. The melody is carefree and loose, and Daniel’s phrasing punctual, strongly emphasizing every syllable in “re-mem-ber” like a command.

While this performance video is not synced properly, I have a special affection for it: a Britt Daniel solo show in San Francisco from last March that I attended. The only highlight of an awful trip.

17 “Don’t You Evah” | Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

Nothing terribly special about this track — it just works. “Don’t You Evah” is very well put together (I like the ascending/descending guitar part) (also more bass love), and features a classic sneer-plea vocal from Daniel. One of the new album’s standouts.

16 “Cvantez” | Telephono

A great vocal from Britt elevates this song from okay to fantastic. Barking and howling until he’s hoarse, Britt is furious here, shouting “SEEE-van-taz” over and over. Along with Telephono‘s “Nefarious,” this was one of the cuts that made a few people pay Spoon any notice back in 1996.