New Spoon - "The Underdog"
That's right, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga's not even out yet! The stabbing piano of "The Ghost Of You Lingers" was the first we heard of the rather excellent album, but it's the Jon Brion-produced "The Underdog" that Spoon is unleashing to the masses, and running with today's summer song theme, the swaggering happy-core handclapping jam is a good choice. It's got an intro in six, some Wes Anderson horns, and those sunny "dos" and "ahs" on the ... wait, why are we acting like you haven't heard this yet? Whatever, enjoy.
Spoon - "The Underdog" (MP3)
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is out 7/10 on Merge.
More songs are streaming at gagagagaga.net, with an additional tune being added every day. On 6/15, you can stream the whole album.
Posted at 5:18 PM in MP3
Tags: Jon Brion | Spoon
Jon Brion is a god.
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Early contender for record of the year. Spoon is currently battling it out with The National's Boxer for dominance in my iTunes playlist.
Boxer is winning, but it's still close early in the 1st quarter.
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i was so stoked for gax5 but find it a let down from gimme fiction. less gravity, too much silly echo effect on the vocals; not enough mystery, too much supremes-style tamborine. not that there arent some great tracks but overall... not nearly as original. Boxer beats it.
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I'm really digging this record something fierce, and this track is great. Maybe I'm being shallow, but wouldn't this song be perfect if it had a kick drum? Just sayin's all.
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Boxer is definitely the record to beat this year. I think it's the best record in a very long time.
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if eddie's raga had the coda it deserved, ga^5 would be the perfect summer album. as it is, it peters out and then has to regain steam towards the end.
boxer is still album of 2007 (and it's still not even as good as alligator!!! imagine that! nothing against boxer, that just speaks to the quality of the national's output). listen to it at least 10 times and try to tell me otherwise.
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why is no one talking about new Caribou...its in the top 5 of the year for sure
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Boxer is great and all (I admit, it's also my pick for "record of the year" thus far), but have you all forgotten about Sound of Silver? James Murphy did no wrong on that one -- "All My Friends" has already been awarded as my pick for "song of the year"!
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Seriously, some of you seem to have forgotten that The Reminder, Sound of Silver, and Hissing Fauna have all come out in 2007. Can't forget about God Save the Clientele either.
I'm not even going to mention all the lesser-known albums that deserve top honors either.
But yeah, this album rawks. Not as much as Gimme Fiction, and certainly not as much as Girls Can Tell, but it's up there. Finer Feelings has got to be one of the top tracks of the year for me.
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07 has been the perfect storm of amazing albums, lest we forget Menomena and Panda Bear along with the aforementioned Of Montreal and LCD Soundsystem... still to come: New Pornographers, Radiohead... holy God.
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anyone else getting bored with spoon?
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no
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does this song remind anyone else of "the boys are back in town"?
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It does sound a little bit like Thin Lizzy...anyway, this album is fantastic. I would expect nothing less.
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Definitely seeing some mid-70s vibe on this. Thin Lizzy...jes.
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Agreed, Allen. Finer Feelings has my vote for best song on the album.
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You guys, check out new Caribou if you can, called Andorra. Seriously, its gonna be top 5.
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my favorites are "you got yr cherry bomb" and "black like me". and i have never heard a single song by the National.
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Sounds more like "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" than Thin Lizzy, to me. Come to think of it, Spoon sound like Croce at his best often.
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Billy Joel at his best...I love it.
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The new Spoon record is the best thing they have done, but the best record of 2007 is "We Are Alive in Tune" by the Attack Formation who is also from Austin. This review sums up the best record you probably haven't heard.
Just to get something out of the way first, and on a completely personal note, I say one of the biggest problems in rock nowadays is the limited instrumentation bands work with. Yes, it's much easier just to get two guitarists, a bassist and a drummer and proclaim yourself a rock band, but really, working on such a small scale, both numerically, timbre-wise (remember, you only got two kinds of instruments there, strings and percussion) limits you in a way that's really noticeable when you compare with another band in the genre with more varied instrumentation. Like Attack Formation. Trust me, trying to make a rock ensemble sound full sometimes ends up being just like cooking with just eggs and soya beans.
Attack Formation is, simply, an indie rock band. The thing is, they aren't limited to just some guitars, percussion and vocals. They are a modern orchestra of sorts, including stuff like electronics, wind and traditional rock instruments. To start with, that means they're already forced to, at least, arrange every instrument, so there is far more complexity here than on your average indie album. But even so, their being good doesn't come solely from including many different sounds, even if it contributes a hell of a lot.
They certainly have a taste for ‘60s rock, both in vocals and compositionally. They aren't afraid to use catchy choruses or even Black Sabbath-like bass riffs, but they don't abuse them either. They aren't afraid to use melodrama and pompous interludes, but they don't shove them down your throat, either. And most of all, they aren't afraid to innovate even over the most common stuff you can think of (see "We Were (Always) Often w/o Money").
While that might make Attack Formation sound like a mish-mash of random segments, they really aren't. They are experimental, sure, but their songwriting is still cohesive and it's really an easy album to listen to, because it's so laid-back. There really are no abrupt changes or anything like that, so much that you might actually wonder just how they manage to keep the same atmosphere going for a whole song.
And that's the good part: Every song is like a different story. For example, "Black Magic" is an IDM-influenced piece (think Aphex Twin on the Richard D. James album) while "Similar Sideways Glance" is mostly hard indie rock with xylophone (think...The New Pornographers with a mini-orchestra, a Hammond organ and synths).
Think of We Are Alive in Tune as a kind of crash course through rock and indie in general, going from brief glimpses of twee to full blown punk pieces with ska-like wind instruments... and sometimes even psycho "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida"-influenced rock songs. Definitely not what we're used to seeing in the mostly conservative indie scene.
It is great, but it's also a little bit too short and not as polished as one would expect, as sometimes the instruments are treated too uniformly and end up cluttering. Get it, if only for the sheer variation and uncommon instrumentation. Future releases should be much, much better. (7.5/10)
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Underdog - Wow, I didn't know Neil Diamond had put out a new song!
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