20 best spoon songs (10-6)

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.

10 “My Mathematical Mind” | Gimme Fiction

Little known fact: this is the (edited to add) second-longest song in the Spoon catalogue. Gimme Fiction had a lot of those: one of the biggest reasons why I rate that record as their second-worst, after Girls Can Tell. “My Mathematical Mind,” though, is great, especially live, probably the biggest reason why I’m ranking it so highly. It’s one of the few times the band takes its ever-present tension and releases it, giving the audience a legitimate crescendo that every other song in the set builds towards.

9 “Small Stakes” | Kill the Moonlight

Such a great opening 30 seconds, the distorted keyboard revving up, Daniel’s voice a hyped-up monotone, a tambourine shaking softly. Todd made a joke earlier today about how hard it is to write about Spoon (”here’s another stripped one”), and it’s true. But this, along with one or two others, is the real pinnacle of the sound.

8 “The Agony of Lafitte”/”Lafitte Don’t Fail Me Now” | The Agony of Lafitte

These two have to be paired together. As is well-known, these two songs were written about a dude named Lafitte who was Spoon’s A&R man for their brief moment on a major label (1998’s A Series of Sneaks) and who, they obviously feel, burned them badly. The two songs — both of them strikingly tender and beautiful — talk convincingly about the before and after, the promises made and the actual results. In “The Agony of Lafitte,” Britt says they are “no better than where we were” and chastises, “When you do that line tonight/ Remember it came at a hefty price.” In “Lafitte Don’t Fail Me Now,” Britt contrasts where the band is to their oh-so-promising A&R man: “There is no way back from this one, buddy” vs. “In the aftermath a promotion/ It’s time to take the trash out.” Britt’s ire is incredibly focused, and it made for two of the band’s very best songs.

7 “Advance Cassette” | A Series of Sneaks

“Advance Cassette” is basically a Pavement song. The guitars sounds exactly the same, Britt mimics Malkmus’ hitch-y delivery and the song supplants Spoon’s usual tautness with the easy sprawl of Stockton’s favorite sons. Even a Pavement lyric: “You’ll know by the look on their faces/ When they pass you/ That you’ve been dropped off on the Texas highway.” If it were a Pavement song, I don’t think it would have made my Top 15 for them, but Pavement were just that great.

6 “Loss Leaders” | Soft Effects

Another great early cut, this one could almost be a Mersey Beat number — listen closely and you can hear Britt’s head bouncing from side to side as he sings. (Also, is that a British accent we hear when he yelps “loss LEE-DARS”?) You can also hear a little bit of Nirvana in the song construction (LOUDsoftLOUD, but also in the way they enter and exit the chorus). Their best early song.