SPOON - Transference (2010)

Spoon have been around for longer I know, but for the past ten years (the whole of the 21^st Centuries first decade) they have been releasing a steadily improving series of fantastic guitar pop albums. Pretty much from 2002’s ‘Kill The Moonlight’ they have just got better and better. ‘it’s unusual for a fairly textbook indie-band set up to be so highly rated by me during this period, a time when the whole genre just got so tedious with people like Snow Patrol and Razorlight that I generally felt nothing but hatred for it. But whereas a band like Athlete would just grunt their mid-tempo 4/4 way through some grade one guitar chords and emotion-by-numbers lyrics, a criminally under-rated band like Spoon has consistently struck upon genuine inspiration. With a combination of concise, witty and not in the least over-emphasised lyrics and a sound that calls upon some dramatic musical structure, occasional funkiness and something your standard indie band can’t get close to, soul, Spoon set a guitar pop standard that few have even bothered to recognise, let alone match or take inspiration from. And so it goes that they remain a relative underground pleasure, none more indie, and this 2010 release appeared on the horizon with eager anticipation from me and basically nobody else I know.

It did appear to get a little more fanfare in the press than before and there has been the vaguest hint that the band themselves have pushed it that bit harder in the UK (well they’ve been over here three times this year and even done a festival). Sorry to say though that this was not the album that Spoon needed that extra push with, however bigger exposure for the two albums before this and things could have been very different. ‘Transference’ isn’t a bad album by any stretch but, by the bands own admission, this is the record that they jammed into being in the studio and as such, it lacks some of the carefully constructed moments of pop brilliance we’ve enjoyed before. There isn’t really an out and out killer single here and there are one or two tracks that feature some slightly featureless extended instrumental sections. There are some very good songs where Spoon play to their strengths; ‘Is Love Forever?’ is short and choppy but its great lyric and unanswerable question give it some weight: “some ex-girlfiend, call her Heather, whispers to me ‘is love forever’?” There’s nothing wrong with a ham-fisted rhyme you know! Overall though I think there’s just that bit of magic missing that they had before. Not a backwards step then but a sideways one, there’s still enough here to suggest that Spoon might yet cause a stir in the future if they scoop up something a little tastier.

Essex Boy Rating: 6/10