I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: May 4, 2022] Spoon [rescheduled from April 15, 2022]

This was possibly the shortest time between a postponed show and a rescheduled show.  Nineteen days!  It’s pretty remarkable that the venues were able to accommodate Spoon with such short notice.

So I’ve never been a huge fan of Spoon, but I like a lot if not most of their songs.  In fact, I like them more and more with each record and with each live show.  It’s like the live experience really shows what they’re doing to its best example.

So this was my third time seeing them.  And it was great.

They opened with “Held” a Smog song that they have covered a lot in the past (and which is on their new album).  As soon as Britt Daniel started singing, someone behind me loudly screamed along “first time in my life!”

I was standing in front of the left side of the stage (at TLA I was on the right side) so I could watch Alex Fischel in al of his glory.  For while there’s no doubt that Britt Daniel is the leader of the band, Fischel you never know what Fischel is going to do.  Even when he plays chords, they somehow seem mysterious–like the aggressive ringing chords of “Got Nuffin” or the insane solo in “The Beast and Dragon, Adored” (the first time I’ve seen them play that one.  The two of them together are an amazing sight to behold.  And when a noisy song like that segues into a melodic treat like “Don’t You Evah” it’s a real treat.

The rest of the band is also great too.  Drummer and co-founder Jim Eno throws in all kinds of sounds on and off beat to make the songs especially complex.  And bassist Ben Trokan adds plenty of backing vocals to really flesh out the voices.

And then there’s Gerardo Larios standing in the back and doing everything else–keys, guitars, percussion, vocals.  There’s never a dull or quiet moment at a Spoon show.

This tour was for their newest album Lucifer on the Sofa.  They played 6 of the ten songs, but they spaced them out throughout the twenty-two song set.  But what’s so great about Spoon is that their songs all fit in perfectly with each other.  Which doesn’t mean they sound the same but, they are instantly recognizable as Spoon.

And when a song like “The Hardest Cut” is so good (with that insanely simple but catchy banging guitar chord) you look forward to the new songs as much as the old ones.

There’s also something so compelling about Daniel. Every time I’ve seen them (even in the deep summer outside) he’s been wearing a jacket for the whole show.  And he doesn’t sit still by any means.

And he’s clearly enjoying himself–he has a ball singing “The Underdog” and its clear the new songs are as much for him as the old ones.  He also seems to enjoy the middle section where he plays acoustic guitar (not that the songs are acoustic or more mellow).

As they got about half way through the set, they moved to older, classic songs.  Like the noisy chaos of “My Mathematical Mind” and the sorta shouted “So I Have to Talk You Into It” (where Daniel slings his guitar over his back and is all about the microphone).

After a few songs playing keyboard, Fischel seemed unleashed when he came back to the guitar for “I Turn My Camera On” for a wonderfully unhinged noise fest.

They ended the set kind of early, I thought, with “The Way We Get By.”  But a short set meant, in this case, a really long encore.

Britt came out and sang a piano accompanied version of John Lennon’s “Isolation.”

The rest of the band came out and they played “Wild” the second single from Lucifer which I had forgotten about and had forgotten how freakin good it is.  That seemed like a likely show ender.  But indeed, no.

They called out Margaret Glaspy for a cover of the Richard and Linda Thompson song “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight.”  Neither singer sounds like the original and yet together they sounded spot on–capturing the feeling of the song perfectly.

And they kept going.  Another song from Lucifer.  Followed by a song that they encored when I saw them at the TLA eight years ago, “Small Stakes.”

But they weren’t quite done yet.

I don’t know if it’s a thing that Spoon always ends with “Ren I Pay,” but all three times that I’ve seen them, they’ve ended with it.  And after a six song encore, they were done.

On the way out, I saw that they had made a short just for our little rescheduled run.  So even though I don’t really like the artwork of the album, I did grab the shirt, because I thought having just the few dates on it was pretty cool.

It’s possible that I’ll never feel the need to see Spoon again, but I know that if I wat to see a good show, Spoon is the band to see.

2022 Fillmore	2019 PNC	2018 TLA
Held (Smog cover)  £	Do I Have to Talk You Into It ⇑	Do I Have to Talk You Into It ⇑
Got Nuffin ≅	The Way We Get By ¢	I Turn My Camera On ψ
Don’t You Evah ∇	My Mathematical Mind ψ	Lowdown (Wire cover)
Do You Û	No Bullets Spent ⊗	The Fitted Shirt Ø
The Beast and Dragon, Adored ψ	The Underdog  ∇	Don’t You Evah ∇
The Hardest Cut £	Isolation (John Lennon cover)	Do You Û
Outlier Û	Inside Out Û	Via Kannela [interlude]
The Underdog  ∇	You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb ∇	Ain’t the One ⇑
My Babe £	I Turn My Camera On ψ	Everything Hits at Once Ø
I Summon You ψ	Don’t You Evah ∇	Can I Sit Next to You ⇑
Lucifer on the Sofa £	Do You Û	My Mathematical Mind ψ
My Mathematical Mind ψ	Rent I Pay Û	Don’t Make Me a Target ∇
Do I Have to Talk You Into It ⇑		The Underdog ∇
Inside Out Û		Got Nuffin ≅
I Turn My Camera On ψ		Black Like Me ∇
The Way We Get By ¢		encore
encore		Small Stakes ¢
Isolation (John Lennon cover)		Hot Thoughts ⇑
Wild £		Rent I Pay Û
I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (Richard and Linda Thompson cover) (with Margaret Glaspy)
Feels Alright £
Small Stakes ¢
Rent I Pay Û

Ø Girls Can Tell (2001)
¢ Kill the Moonlight (2002)
ψ Gimme Fiction (2005)
∇ Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (2007)
≅ Transference (2010)
Û They Want My Soul (2014)
⇑ Hot Thoughts (2017)
⊗ Everything Hits at Once (2019)
£ Lucifer on the Sofa (2022)