Spoon is a reliable touchstone, a reassuring presence in a world that gets more surreal by the day. It seems like the Texas-bred Indie Rock band could go on forever, dropping ear-pleasing albums every few years and standing as a stabilizing force in an increasingly fractured culture altered forever by technology and social media.
Spoon’s ninth album, last year’s Hot Thoughts, is yet another variation on frontman Britt Daniel’s long-running love of terse, sharp-edged Rock & Roll. In fact, it’s as dynamic as anything in the band’s catalog. “Do I Have to Talk You Into It,” “Can I Sit Next to You” and the title track are classic Spoon — deceptively simple songs featuring signature interlocking parts. There’s the insistent beats from essential drummer Jim Eno, angular guitar riffs from newest member/multi-instrumentalist Alex Fischel, driving bass lines from Rob Pope and Daniel’s vocals, which just keep getting more expressive and rich as the years roll on.
That’s not saying the band hasn’t evolved since breaking through with Girls Can Tell, the 2001 album that moved Spoon from arty, Wire-inspired minimalists to songcraft-centric, NPR-endorsed darlings. Hot Thoughts further pushes the band’s recent move into moodier, even mysterious territory. Songs like “Pink Up” and the album-closing instrumental “Us” are as informed by atmospheric keyboards and horns as by their traditional guitar-bass-drums setup.
Yet Eno says the slight shift in mood and tone wasn’t necessarily intentional.
“We didn’t really talk about things like that when we started this record,” he says from a recent tour stop in England. “It’s all based on the collection of songs that Britt brings to the table. There were songs we tried to do with the band that we knew wouldn’t really fit on the record, so they sort of got shelved.”
Eno says that each album evolves organically, informed both by how each song plays off the other and how it works as a cohesive whole.
“If you look at the direction for this record, think about a song like ‘Inside Out’ off of (2014’s) They Want My Soul,” he says, referencing Spoon’s last release, a down-tempo, keyboard-dominated album that marked a more atmospheric direction. “That’s the last song we recorded on that record, so you can look at that both sonically and mood-wise as a jumping-off point for Hot Thoughts. I feel like that’s a good way to think about it.
“That’s a really fun song to play live. It’s one of our favorite songs on the record. It made a big impact on us. It seems like a logical step. You can hear that in new songs like ‘I Ain’t the One’ and ‘Pink Up.’ ”
The other obvious influence on the last two records is noted producer Dave Fridmann, whose distinctive approach has infected collaborators from The Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev to Sleater-Kinney and Mogwai. Fridmann’s remote upstate New York recording compound can’t help but inform the records he guides, often yielding a more intimate and visceral feel than most bands can conjure without him.
“Dave’s amazing,” says Eno, himself a successful producer and engineer with his own studio in Austin, Texas. “He gets great sounds. He’s a great producer. He keeps everything moving ahead and has a vision for how each song should sound. He has a different ear. He’s a great guy to be with in the studio, which is good because you want a really positive attitude. Everything has to be positive when you’re trying to be creative. You don’t want to shut down things when you’re in the studio.”
One of the more unexpected developments in the rollout of Hot Thoughts was the band’s decision to reunite with Matador Records. In 1996, the famed New York City label put out Spoon’s debut, Telephono, which didn’t fare well. After a Matador EP, the group signed with a major label (Elektra), which was a disastrous experience. By 2000, Spoon had teamed up with respected indie Merge Records, which was start of the band’s ascension in the Indie Rock world.
“We put our first record out on (Matador), and if you talk to everyone involved it didn’t go very well,” Eno says. “But we’ve remained friends with those guys. We see them in New York when we come to town. We sent them the new record, we were shopping it around, and they were pretty much the most ecstatic label that we sent it to. They really love the songs. They really loved everything about it and they really wanted to put it out. They made a very compelling case (for) why they were the best label to do it.”
Spoon also liked seeing what Matador had grown into, from its distribution to its taste in signings. That aspect hasn’t changed much — when first signing with Matador in the ’90s, Spoon became labelmates with Pavement and Liz Phair; when the band reteamed with the label, it joined a stable of artists that now includes similarly celebrated newcomers like Perfume Genius, Julien Baker and Snail Mail.
“We respect all the bands on their label and they have a great roster,” Eno says. “They’re tied intrinsically with the (powerful label collective) Beggars Group, so we get worldwide support, which is cool. It’s definitely a different label than the first time around. It’s really good to be back with them.”
It’s not hard to hear why Matador was so effusive — Hot Thoughts simultaneously employs the ingredients that have made Spoon so compelling over the years while also incorporating new elements to keep things fresh. Eno — the only other constant besides Daniel over Spoon’s 25-year existence — says the band’s secret to success and continued relevance is a mix of Daniel’s writing and self-motivation.
“I feel like Britt is writing the best songs that he’s ever written,” he says. “There are some amazing tracks on this record. I’m always amazed at the new stuff he comes up with.
“I also feel like in the studio when it comes to production, we consciously try not to reproduce ourselves. Often, we will be like, ‘We’ve done something like that before, let’s switch it up, let’s try to find a different sound.’ We’re very in tune with the studio process and we really want things to sound different and new, so we’re always looking for sounds that are different than we’ve used before. It makes it exciting for us, because we don’t want to always be doing the same thing.”
Spoon plays Riverbend’s PNC Pavilion Monday with Grizzly Bear. Click here for tickets/more info.
This article appears in Jun 13-20, 2018.