Transference
Album | Spoon
Even at his most abstract, Britt Daniel can’t suppress a knack for melody
Over the course of seven albums, Spoon have admirably morphed from hooky garage rockers to skillful pop maestros, complete with funky horn sections and soul-inspired crooning. If the band's last album, 2007's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga was a populist step forward into the mainstream, Transference is a wily step sideways. Fans of 2002's Kill The Moonlight will find a lot to love here: songs that skitter off in five directions at once ("Nobody Gets Me But You"), groove-based jams that erupt in guitar-heavy meltdowns ("Written in Reverse," "Got Nuffin"), and lots of sublime, restrained melancholy ("Goodnight Laura"). For a band two decades into an already lauded career and still gathering an increasingly large and passionate following, the cagey Transference is a smart move indeed. Even at his weirdest and most abstract, frontman Britt Daniel can't suppress a knack for melody and general hummability, and though the production seems a little too deliberately rough-edged and the songs at times perhaps too fragmentary, Transference ranks among the band's finest and most admirably experimental efforts.
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