At Fox Theater last night, Spoon poured out the feeling and power that has captured the ears of fans for the last 16 years. At the bittersweet conclusion of the group's tour with
Deerhunter and
Micachu and the Shapes, the band dealt out 24 songs with little fanfare or chatting in between, leaving everyone exhausted but satisfied.
The group began last night with a familiar trick from its records: a quiet, mood-setting opener (the distant, brooding "Before Destruction," the first track from new album Transference). Singer-guitarist Britt Daniel took the stage in a tiny black leather jacket and black pants. He strummed the initial chords almost lazily, and it seemed unclear whether he really meant to begin. But Daniels and Co. are masters of dynamics. They play quietly and repetitively so that any addition or tempo change seems a revelation. The tension moved up one notch with the insistent drums and gritty chords of "I Saw The Light." But things really hit at the third tune, the jangly, piano-driven "The Way We Get By," a classic off the band's fourth album that doesn't arrive at full potency until it's halfway over.
From there, the band jumped around between old material, new stuff, and the pop-rock radio hits that allow the group to play at large, sold-out theaters. The crowd -- a range of characters that included drunk thirtysomethings and snotty sophomores -- flashed Spoon wide grins and supplied generous applause, but didn't move much.
Some consider it a drag for a band to play just like on their album, but the approach worked for Spoon. Daniel has a dusty, feline yawl, and he wielded it faithfully onstage until it started to fail him at the end. He got his sharp, subtle guitar parts just right. Eric Harvey jumped back and forth from guitar to keys, using a deft touch to capture how the band's studio sounds. Drummer Jim Eno banged with machine-like reliability and detail; each cymbal and kick felt right-on.
When the band did veer from the recorded versions of its songs, it was either necessary (there was no horn section for "The Underdog" and "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb") or very much on purpose. But even when Daniels opened Spoon's five-song encore with a gorgeous, solo acoustic rendition of "Me And The Bean," the patterns of his strumming reproduced the song's indelible, cascading piano melody perfectly on the guitar.
If Spoon has a weakness, it's that the band doesn't really progress. Early songs show more punk influence, but otherwise Spoon's sound has changed very little over the last five albums. Similarly, I've never been able to shake my initial impression that many Spoon songs themselves don't go anywhere: rather than moving from one emotion to the next, most feel like static snapshots of a mood or moment.
I heard complaints of "boring" in the hallways of the Fox after last night's show, and even I got impatient a few times (like during "I Turn My Camera On," Spoon's most forgettable single.) But even if those who haven't found something to enjoy in the band's albums didn't find it last night, Spoon gave the rest of us all we wanted.
Personal Bias: Micachu and the Shapes played a fittingly weird opening set, with singer-songwriter Mica Levi stuffing paper into her guitar strings and twisting the tuning pegs to get the strangely un-tuned sounds her songs call for. The rambling laptop-pop translated surprisingly well onstage, even though Levi confessed halfway through that her band had been interrupted at dinner to perform at the hilariously early hour of 7:30 p.m. The highlight of their set was bottles turning into bells. Keyboardist, laptop-player, and sometime-percussionist Raisa Khan started banging on a wine bottle hung over a drum stand, but when she finished her Corona, she dropped that over another vertical stand and started playing it as well.
Tags: Deerhunter, Micachu and the Shapes, Spoon, Image
