I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of seeing Spoon live. (Or Britt Daniel in general, I suppose, because he always brings it with Divine Fits as well.) Maybe it’s one of the benefits of having so many compact, spiky songs, but I can’t really remember ever leaving a Spoon show thinking “Oh, I really they’d played this one song…” There’s always something incredibly satisfying about seeing them live, and their crazily consistent level of excellent songwriting means that their setlists wind up feeling like giant, unbeatable greatest hits compilations. There was some new stuff in the mix this time around, too, and — no surprise here, really — it sounded very good. I didn’t see many sets on the Big Apple Stage, but each one I did witness suffered from fairly crippling sound issues; everything was just totally flattened. That was the main hindrance for Spoon, unfortunately. They specialize in an approximation of sweaty rock ‘n’ roll for the gawky, brainy, but still sorta cool kid set. This time around, their energy was there as always, just somewhat dulled by the technical shortcomings surrounding them. Were it not for that, they’re probably rank even higher. (Photo via Getty Images)