Love the new single, and look forward to the record. I'm kinda glad to hear him say that about New York, I moved from Chicago last summer and still have trouble finding anything comparable to the hubs of Smartbar and Berlin in New York. It's totally weird that New York doesn't have a place like Smartbar where no matter what night you go you'll find someone djing whose of some interest. I actually saw Maclean and Shit Robot dj about a month ago, but everywhere I've gone none of the clubs seem that special. Does no one in Brooklyn want to be the new Michael Brody? Seems odd.
There's a couple of albums I associate with first starting to drive. This is one of them, even though I'd been driving for a year or so. I spent a lot of time in High School driving around with friends, but I also spent a lot of time alone, in a car, listening to music, taking pictures, reading books and art magazines at Borders (we're old, guys) drinking coffee (which was also new) and having disposable income for the first time. Whenever I hear electronic music from this period I think about RES magazine and Lost in Translation and The Director's Label dvds, Spike Jonze, William Eggleston, Mike Mills, my first real brush with contemporary art. I still love the record, too, and I think it holds up just fine.
Also I have the most emo and embarrasing way of finding this album: a "friend" on LiveJournal posted about it and always had it in her "Now Playing" at the top of her posts. She was cute.
True story: Annie Clark came into my National Coffee Chain store last week like two minutes before we closed. She needed to use the bathroom, my coworkers had no idea who she was so they were angry when I excitedly was like "Yes, you, of course, bathroom right there, anytime, yes." Then I was freaking out. It's in area that gets a lot of famousy people, many of whom I'm a fan of, but for some reason I was so starstruck by her because she's a fucking rock star and I've seen her crowdsurf in heels and just destroy giant theaters. Anyway when she came out she thanked me and I yelled "You're great!" and she said "What?" I repeated myself and she said "Oh, thanks." and left. Honestly the most embarrassing thing ever but she was so sweet about it and I think she understood I meant her music and what not and not just some creepy dude yelling "You're great!" to pretty ladies. My coworkers have not stopped making fun of me.
In all this discussion no one mentions Transference. Much like Kill The Moonlight presented a shift in their sound, I really think Transference will prove to be that too. They kind of reached the apex of accessibility and sterling crafted pop songs with Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, and Transference strips that all down. It's the most reductively Spoony Spoon album. Instead of filling out melodies, it tries to see how little of one you can have while still being pop music. It's kind of a visionary record too, I think, and one that will grow in people's estimation as it ages.
As for this record, it was the record I fell in love with Spoon with. I'd only heard "Cvantez" on a mix a friend made for me before Kill The Moonlight. It became the default car cd every time I went out with friends, and in that horribly literal way you consume things in high school, we did end up smoking a fair amount of pot in the back seats of my mom's car. That's a depressing sentence.
Great record!
I think I got into it a year after it came out. I'm sure I heard the singles, but I had a dumb "I refuse to listen to pop music" phase during High School. I listened to nothing but Classical (Stravinsky, predominately) and Jazz (Miles Davis, predominately) for like two years, then I started driving and falling in love with movies, which completely opened me up to everything else. I don't even remember how I found the record, because I wasn't listening to radio or watching MTV (or MTV2, which seemed so much cooler then). It must have been a magazine. I remember being instantly attracted to the cover, with it's Eggleston in 2002 quality. I just remember driving all night after school, in the winter, in the snow, listening to this album non-stop, taking shitty pictures of Christmas lights with my first digital camera I bought with three checks from my awful job. It got me into Joy Division too, which is nothing to be ashamed of. Hell, reading a Deftones review got me into My Bloody Valentine, which in my middle class suburb was just about the artiest thing I'd ever encountered. I still think this album is good. It's one of the few actual CDs I bought post mp3, and any time I'm back at my parents apartment I end up playing it in their mp3-incompatible cars. Who cares, right? It's a great album, and I've never listened to more than 30 seconds of anything else they've done. That's not fair, but it also keeps me loving this album.
How could it not be?
I made a whole trip to NY to see the last two shows and never once regretted any part of it. It was beautiful week, two incredible shows.
I know they're putting this out and then a full recording of the show, I wonder which one Spike Jonze was involved with. This looks like it was shot on the 7D and that's what Jonze was carrying around the whole night. He was also interviewing people in MSG's lobby before the show.
It's amazing what rich people who arbitrarily have American relatives who arbitrarily live in arbitrated Germany arbitrarily can do arbitrarily when they put their minds to arbitrary things.
Also this shit moving.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-y0kk6e2AAXE/TZBv_fivVPI/AAAAAAAABFg/jJvyJL6eSec/s1600/dakota-fanning-in-mj-ads.jpg
Don't forget to not remember that Fanning was doing these ads when she was Not a girl, not yet a War of the Worlds woman too. So. This one's less seedy?
That'd be great if they got another album out next year. An EP one year, an album early the next, and the follow up a year after that is a good pace to set to make sure people remember you and build a following. Which is something I think they're doing anyway. I saw them play two times in the last year and they evolved so much in a few months and they're terrific live. The record is stellar too, hopefully it won't be forgotten in the year-end roundups.
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