After releasing five records in the space of nine years, Spoon needed a break.
Following 2010’s Transference and a subsequent world tour, the Austin-based band went on an indefinite hiatus. Since forming more than twenty years ago in 1993, Spoon have been working in a seemingly never-ending cycle. They would release an album, tour the world on the back of it, write another album, return to the studio and release it, all within the space of two years. Wash, rinse, and repeat.
In late 2010, each band member went their own way. “It was time to step away, we were pretty fried,” drummer Jim Eno admits from his home in Austin, Texas. “Especially for me and Britt, we started the band in ’93, and ever since then all we’ve been doing is writing, recording, touring; writing, recording, touring, for seven records straight, with no breaks the entire time.”
During the break frontman Britt Daniel formed two supergroups, bassist Rob Pope opened a bar, multi-instrumentalist Eric Harvey released a solo album, and Eno went into full-time producing at his studio, Public Hi-Fi in Austin.
The break turned out to be exactly what each member needed. Some time off, a chance to press the reset button, and the opportunity to return to Spoon with a fresh outlook. “We’re all older and wiser,” Eno confirms. “The break was good, I feel like we all have a better perspective on Spoon.”
After more than a three year break, Britt Daniel picked up the phone in November of 2012 and set the wheels in motion for what would become Spoon’s eighth album, They Want My Soul.
“Britt actually called me at one point and said he wanted to get together in three weeks, and I was like, ‘yeah Britt, I need a little bit more notice than that’,” he laughs. “He was busy with Divine Fits stuff so he suggested that we go off and do some stuff, and send it to him. We actually sent him a couple of songs and he really liked one of them. He sent it back with lyrics and vocal melodies and changes. It was pretty cool.”
Love The Beatles?
Get the latest The Beatles news, features, updates and giveaways straight to your inbox Learn more
“That was the start of the process, so it was pretty exciting.” After the extended break, Spoon wanted to make a statement.
Using a combination of harsh snare drum and a booming kick drum, they created Jim Eno’s “gnarliest” drum sound and did exactly that on the first track, ‘Rent I Pay’.
And with an opening drum sound “like a shotgun”, Spoon were back.
“if we were trying a new part or trying to come up with something, if it sounded too much like Spoon, we would get rid of it.”
Their new album, They Want My Soul, sees a number of changes, with the use of outside producers, Joe Chiccarelli (Beck, The Strokes) and Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips) for the first time, a return to a major label in Loma Vista, and a new member, Alex Fischel.
But it still sounds like a Spoon record from start to finish.
Despite having released seven albums before it, there’s still the normal mixture of nerves and excitement in the days leading up to its release for drummer Jim Eno.
“We haven’t released anything in four years, and this one we feel like is a good one,” Eno says. “We’re really excited about it, we’re really happy with it. We’re really proud of how everything turned out.”
“But you just never know. We’re hoping people like it.”
With an extensive back-catalogue under their belts, Eno says the new record feels like an amalgamation of all of the band’s previous efforts.
“This record takes all the best things from all the previous Spoon records and puts them all together,” he says enthusiastically. “It feels like a mix of all the other records. It’s more of an outward record as opposed to an inward record. I feel like Transference was more of an inward record. It probably took more listens to get into your head, before you really cracked the code.”
“This one is a more inviting record, like ‘hey we just made a kickass record, come in and join us and hang out’. Now it just feels different. It’s more exciting. The live shows feel really fun. The recording process was fun too. I think things feel good.”
Spoon are one of those bands that are instantaneously recognisable, from Jim Eno’s driving drums, Rob Pope’s throbbing bass, and Britt Daniel’s jittery guitar and smoothly hoarse, confident vocals.
They Want My Soul is no different. You know it’s a Spoon record from the opening drum and guitar lines, but there’s something more too it. There’s a bit extra, especially in terms of electronic experimentation. They’re a band that know exactly where their zone is, but still aren’t afraid to playfully stray outside it, always returning to safety eventually.
The album also features a cover, Ann Magret’s 1961 ‘I Just Don’t Understand’, made famous by The Beatles. But unless you already knew the song, you’d hardly be able to tell. In testament to the strength of Spoon’s sound, they immediately claim ownership over the song, slapping their own brand of jaunty piano and acoustic guitar on the song.
It’s just like good old Spoon, but with an extra garnish expertly placed on top. The whistling on ‘Knock Knock Knock’, the swirling synth of ‘Inside Out’ and the spacey tones on ‘New York Kiss’ are never the centre-points, that’s still reserved for the three-punch of guitar, drums, and bass, but they complement the sound brilliantly.
“I feel like we’re always experimenting,” Eno confirms. “One of the things we constantly do, but I feel like we did it more on this record, was if we were trying a new part or trying to come up with something, if it sounded too much like Spoon, we would get rid of it.”
“We’ve done a lot of that stabby piano stuff,” he continues. “If things were too much or we’ve done it too many times, we were always trying to make something new and make parts that would be more exciting and not rely on things we’ve done in the past.”
Avoiding sounding “too much like Spoon” must be something that is becoming increasingly difficult for the Austin-based band, who came into being more than twenty years ago. Frontman Britt Daniel and Eno met in late 1993, and after picking the Can-inspired name, released their first EP, Nefarious, in the next year. They were soon signed to Matador Records, and released their debut album in 1996.
Since then, they’ve maintained an unassuming confidence across all releases, something that has never been stronger than on their latest record. So much so even, that they may have picked a fight with one Zach Braff. “I remember when you walked out of Garden State,” Britt Daniel laments on ‘Outlier’. “Cause you had taste, you had taste / You had no time to waste.” Ouch.
For a band that have been around for over twenty years, Spoon have never really enjoyed consistent mainstream popularity. It seems many take them for granted, rendering the band perhaps a victim of their own ability to continually release solid records. They found fleeting success with pop singles such as ‘The Underdog’ and ‘Way We Get By’, but they have never really become a truly household name.
A fact which is entirely unfair for one of the few bands that make classic rock ‘n’ roll still seem interesting and cool. There’s a very short list of bands who have been consistently good across eight albums, and Spoon deserve their place on it.
Britt Daniel recently labelled ‘Inside Out’ as the “most beautiful” song the band has ever created, and it would be a difficult task to argue against it. It’s expertly and lovingly crafted, awash with restrained synth, driving bass and Daniel’s trademark hoarse vocals. As with the rest of the album, it’s Spoon, but with an edge.
This edge may have been honed with some help from Eno and the experience he gained while producing full-time during the band’s break. Across this period, he produced records for the esteemed likes of !!!, Heartless Bastards, The Relatives, and The Strange Boys.
“It was great,” Eno says of his time producing. “What happens with Spoon is after we finish recording, Britt needs time to write, because he doesn’t write on the road. So I would always work with bands during that time, and I just really love being in the studio and really love producing, so it was really fun to do it nonstop for three years.”
Eno also worked closely with Australia’s own The Preatures, producing their soon-to-be released debut album, an experience he describes as “awesome”.
On working with The Preatures: “that record is going to be really, really good. I really can’t wait for it to come out. ”
“They came in and spent pretty much three and a half weeks here in Austin,” Eno says. “We just drank a lot of Tecate, ate a lot of breakfast tacos, and hung out at the studio.”
“Man, that record is going to be really, really good. I really can’t wait for it to come out. I really love those guys, they’re super sweet people and really talented too. I’m a huge fan.”
On They Want My Soul, as with any Spoon record, Daniel’s lyrics are vague and difficult to categorically interpret. There’s a strange, brooding sense of melancholy and despair, something that contrasts with the general upbeat backing. There are hints of breakups, New York City, and even the hostile villain of Kill The Moonlight’s ‘Jonathan Fisk’: “Educated folk singers want my soul / Jonathan Fisk still wants my soul / I got nothing I wanna say / They got nothing, nothing I want”. Longtime fans are sure to enjoy the callback to Daniel’s high school bully who would later become a huge fan of the band.
On ‘Rainy Taxi’, Daniel considers leaving it all behind (“And if you say run / I may run with you / I got no-one else / I got nothing else”) while on ‘Outlier’ he muses on the transformation of the mysterious protagonist: “What happened to you kid? / What’s happening to you now?”. It’s songs like this that display the true mastery of Spoon. There’s so much going on at the same time, a seemingly ridiculous wall of contrasting sounds, but somehow they manage to make it work seamlessly.
This seamlessness is something that has been honed across the band’s twenty year-plus lifespan, but the actual recording process still proves to be hard at times for the now five-piece.
“I feel like things are a little bit easier, but it’s still a little bit stressful and you’re trying to create something that’s really great and you love,” he reveals. “You have to crack the code of each song, you have to figure out how to make each song the best. If it’s not, it just doesn’t make the record. That process doesn’t get a lot easier, it’s still a lot of work.”
Across the 20 plus years Spoon has been a band, there’s perhaps only one thing Eno would change. “I don’t know if we would ever have picked the name Spoon if we knew we were going to be a band twenty years later,” he laughs.
“Maybe we’ll change our name on the next record,” he jokes. “How about Cashed Up Bogans? They’ll like that in Western Australia right? I’m a little obsessed with Australian slang.”
To coincide with the new album, Spoon have launched the ‘Instant Vinyl Gratification’ service, where those that preorder the album from certain record stores will receive the three already released tracks on a special 10-inch vinyl, as opposed to digitally.
“It was trying to tie in vinyl and physical products with actual record stores,” Eno describes. “We’re fans of record stores, we visit a lot of record stores. It just felt like a cool thing to do.”
Eno is a firm supporter of the recent resurgence of vinyl. “I’ll keep buying vinyl as much as possible,” he confirms. “It’s going to sound better. It’s a physical medium, people like picking things up, they like looking at artwork. Just like when we were young looking at records, there’s something very tactile about it, and that’s a good thing. It’s a process, it’s a commitment, you’re going to listen to a whole record when you put it in. It’s just a better listening experience.”
As for a return to our shores, Eno anticipates a visit in Autumn next year.
“We’ll hopefully be thinking about Australia next year. We really love touring over there,” he says, likely to excite the wealth of fans in the country.
“You guys have been supportive since back in the early days. Since Kill The Moonlight when ‘Way We Get By’ came out. So we love it over there, we really do.”
So much so, it seems, that one of Eno’s favourite tours ever was on Australian soil. Back in 2008, Spoon played the Big Day Out festival along with the likes of Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem, Battles, and Rage Against The Machine.
“That was so awesome. That festival run was maybe one of my favourite tours ever,” he says enthusiastically. “It was like high school summer camp with all these bands. They would always have days off and we would go to see LCD Soundsystem or they would come to see us, or we would all go to see Arcade Fire. It was pretty amazing.
After more than twenty years making music and touring the world with the same people, Jim Eno can’t see an end in sight.
“I still see us making records and still touring.”
Spoon seem to be a band that have withstood time, expectations, and the ever-changing musical landscape. As Britt Daniel croons on ‘Inside Out’, “Time keeps on going when / We got nothing else to give”.
But for now, Jim Eno and co still have a lot to give.
They Want My Soul is out now via Spunk Records.
