Fate dealt Britt Daniel an abject hand.
While derivative charlatans grew fat on the vines of hardly evolved excess, Spoon was left to wither on Elektra Record's anemic stream of cowardly negligence until, having finally depleted its last drop of career hemlock, the fitted shirts summarily dropped the band. Daniel had been pummeled by an ostracizing conglomerate that logically assumed Spoon would swallow their jilted destiny and wilt into obscurity under the sundering Austin sun.
But as fate's capricious whim (or maybe the resilience engrained in statehood compatriots like Trail of Dead or the Secret Machines who remain brute enough to not only thwart but bloom in Texas' scorched terrain) would have it, Spoon followed through "Metal Detektor's" bank-breaking bravado. Today finds them opting for a convoluted path -- simultaneously erratic and logical -- over the course of three albums, vaulting them beside Wilco as one of the two Great American Rock Bands, a position left vacated since Nigel Gordich met Stephen Malkmus.
"A Series of Sneaks," the ill-fated 1998 major-label debut that led to Spoon's alienation, leaped from speakers with sloppy intensity and cocky brilliance. We're talking auditory adrenaline distilled from the true Pixies traits that Nirvana disciples attempting to decipher their idol's idols could never root out. This is jagged guitars tirelessly cycling through heaps of killer hooks, sometimes in the same song; snaking and scattershot song structure; and, most importantly, a knack for capacious melodies that smash through the walls of the sound blanketing them.
Finally surfacing amid baffling commercial disinterest last year, "Girls Can Tell" emerged sounding like Daniel and Co. took sanding paper to "Sneaks" before dousing it in semi-gloss to produce the year's most radiant albums with oracular roots. Early influences melted into the smoother, more structured Costello-esque punk with patient layering of restrained but gleaming instrumentation (vibes, viola and mellotron) that undulated and crested in languid grooves that the sub-three-minute explosions of "Sneaks" couldn't (or simply didn't wish to) manage.
With everything hitting at once and inducing a comatose state of mind that lulled newcomers to haplessly follow Daniel, none could predict he would be leading them to the river's edge and inciting the artistic leap of faith that is Spoon's new salvo, "Kill the Moonlight."
Existing in a vacuum between "Girls" and "Sneaks," the album thrives on dichotomies that have always existed in the band but never at the same time. Plodding rhythms feel constantly at threat to falling into a lurking abyss of eeriness. Anomalous, angular arrangements glow with Rock n' Roll defiance but hide behind cold nonchalance, too much so at points. Daniel casually alternates from a disinterested British Invasion sneer into a bedroom whisper, slipping in and out mid-songs.
The minimalism previously experimented with becomes exploited, as if Spoon has broken down every song within its range to its minimal components, reduced those elements to their soul and sliced them back together. In the face of such deconstruction, "Kill the Moonlight" startlingly maintains its presence as an inherently Spoon album.
In the past, Spoon left the listener to unravel the fury of its arrangement, but now they're brought up front with the spotlight unwaveringly fixated: barbing, jerky guitars and the tight punch of Jim Eno's drumming ("Something to Look Forward to," "You Gotta Feel It"), frantic strumming mirroring Daniel's controlled but unpredictable spitting of each syllable ("Jonathan Fisk," "Someone Something") and the back porch acoustic stomp with edges frayed in futuristic psychedelics ("Back to the Life").
Even silence becomes means of altering the entire mood of a song. On "Small Stakes," Daniel sings electro-blues over stressful insignificance as a palpitating new wave organ intermittently flirts with a playful tambourine, and the pounding undercurrent of a racing heartbeat perpetually builds expectation for an explosion that goes absent. Elsewhere we find an ominous, near sinister gloom emitted from the sparseness of silence filling each gap between the hallow clang of drumsticks, inverted beats that trip over themselves and a haunting piano ("Paper Tiger"). Later, Daniel's beatboxing paired with a rudimentary low bass beat and repetitive guitar grooves create R&B from seeming scraps ("Stay Don't Go").
The sparse arrangements further expose Daniel's uncannily burgeoning melodic craft of Daniel, who has grown fonder of the piano, often in the place of the guitar as on "The Way We Get By," a jazzy romp with one of the year's most memorable hooks.
As handclaps and piano rollick in support, Daniel croons, "We found a new kind of a dance in a magazine/ Tried it out its like nothing you've ever seen."
Apparently, as Elektra must be realizing, Daniel brims with surprises.
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