AR: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (2007)

Sometimes my response to a record is beyond me; if I can't get past something about a group or an album - a grating voice, an irritating cadence, the fact that the opening track's chromatic descent sounds for all the world like they're doing a bad job covering "Cry, Baby, Cry" - it doesn't matter how high quality or interesting the music is. I'm just not going to have that requisite je-ne-se-qois-response that connects me to the art. I should, by any rational account, love Spoon. They're from Austin, TX, they play judicious, expertly crafted indie rock, and they lay on catchy, straight-ahead hooks in a variety of genres. They even manage to stamp everything with their signature sound / approach - to call them sparse would be improper, but there is an idiosyncratic stream-lined, bare bones-ness about their music that would normally be highly appealing. Everything's in its right place, and their driving music is unruffled by gratuitous complexity, even when (as on this album) they ornament tracks with hand-claps, horns and studio banter. Their long songs come across as concise, if that's enough to properly convey what I'm getting at. Minimalist (often riff!) rock with full, energetic instrumentation and staccato beats abound.

So what's my problem? Well, there are a couple of things. One, the big one, I just don't like the singer's voice - it's gruff, with a whiskey burned edge that clashes with the oft-present fuzz in their guitar and bass or the bright acoustic strums. It's inherently unpleasant on a lot of tracks to my ears, like cilantro to the genetically cursed. Two, like the album title Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, the dit-dit-dit-dit-dit MO gets old after a while - some of their songs, not necessarily on this album, bore into a space that just gets irritating. They walk the fine line of simple and repetitive, sometimes unsuccessfully.

With those qualifiers aside, 2007's GGGGG got a lot of great press, so I did my best to swallow my preconceived notions about my normal Spoon-gagging. And all my prejudices aside, there's some great stuff going on here. "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb" employs some rumbling horns and smartly recalls Motown. "Don't You Evah" is a slinking, funky slacker rock number that has the whole band coinciding in a fantastic polyrhthym; the bassline drives this one like nobody's business. "Eddie's Ragga" is a brooding tune that dances on its guitar upbeats with force. "Finer Feeling" drives along in popcraft expert-mode, the hook so permeating as to carry through a strange fade out interlude before the last verse. (It occurs to me that many of these tracks have the lead singer high in his vocal register, diluting the raw edge of his voice. It doesn't take much...).

Oddly, the tracks that get praised routinely in reviews do not strike me as standouts. "The Underdog" hits me as a ghastly reincarnation of Chicago-esque shmaltz or Billy Joel's most hellacious, infectious (like a VIRUS) rhythms - other people call this something along the lines of a "brilliant '70s pop homage." The opening track, as mentioned, infuriates my Beatles-biased ears, and its allegedly intelligent follow-up, "The Ghost of You Lingers," is centered around an irritating repetitive piano-pounding that has been pulled off planetoids-better by the likes of Laurie Anderson. "Black Like Me" may be the biggest offender - it sounds for all the world like a stripped down Jeff Tweedy album-closer, and in its relative simplicity, all of the band's more forks-on-chalkboard elements come through.

In the end, I'm glad I gave Spoon another chance. I can recognize even while being irritated by my own mysterious axiomatic tastes that these are sharp, carefully crafted numbers; Spoon's regimented approach does allow for an impressive amount of precision. And GGGGG is less repetitive, wider ranging and thus more interesting than their previous sparer efforts. So I am going to step outside myself for a moment and recognize that there are a slew of people out there who enjoy the singing on these records, so I probably shouldn't discount an album that I would have otherwise enjoyed. Give 'er a listen via the interwebs before buying to make sure that Britt Daniel doesn't inspire you to self-injury. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is a lively, aerodynamic record, one that I wouldn't necessarily have put at the top of any lists but one that hits an enjoyable, uncomplicated indie-pop rock aesthetic in many moments.

Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "Don't You Evah"