Spoon

Spoon

Once you get to the fourth Bonnaroo afternoon in the Tennessee heat, you can use a little kick to start the night. Spoon, as ever, are the exact band for that. You don’t go to a Spoon show expecting a lot of surprises (though they did play a new song and their recent Cramps cover, which was an excellent addition to the set). That’s what’s appealing about them — they have so many consistently great songs that there are too many to fit into every set, but they manage to touch on most of them anyway. Mixing in highlights from last year’s excellent They Want My Soul, they’d do things like play “The Way We Get By” into “Small Stakes” a few songs in, because why not? They have plenty of other heavy-hitters to save for later, “I Turn My Camera On” and “Don’t Make Me A Target” going over particularly well in the latter half of the set. Interesting live touches were scattered throughout, too, like when the keyboard sounds of “Ghost Of You Lingers” grew and grew to the point where Britt Daniel’s voice was almost totally drowned in the noise, or when he walked over to a keyboard to add a third layer of texture to the already lush ending of “Inside Out.” These guys are just ridiculously good at what they do: sharp songs, performed raw but impeccably, as effective at a late night gig as they are on the field of a festival in the early evening. Spoon’s one of the most immediately gratifying rock shows going these days. “Still with us?” Daniel asked the crowd at one point, before adding, “We’re still with you.” They’re reliable like that.