Wed, March 24, 2010
The National Theatre
(Richmond, VA)
Whether intentional or not, Spoon know how to make themselves look good.
Sharing a bill with Deerhunter was a stroke of luck, or genius, for Britt Daniel and Co. The former's meandering guitar wankery and aimless psychedelia was the perfect foil to Spoon's brand of insistent, stripped-down rock 'n roll. After Bradford Cox finished slamming the microphone into his forehead, apparently in a stupor brought on by his outfit's insistence on reducing song after song into a droning mishmash of feedback, the stage was set for a brilliant second-half comeback.
Spoon, by contrast, are the consummate on-stage professionals. All business, minimal chatter, and a deft mix of current hits and deeper album cuts, the overall impression they leave is that of how a live show should sound: rawer, more muscular, yet immediately recognizable interpretations of their studio tracks. Spoon's sound has been described (well) as the struggle between control and release: the band's bare-bones riffs are anchored by Jim Eno's thunderous timekeeping and augmented by Daniel's insistent shredding.
The show was heavy with cuts from Transference, their latest, and the previous Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, but they found time to slip in some choice classics such as "Everything Hits At Once" from Girls Can Tell. At one point, Daniel paused to cup a hand to his ear teasingly in the direction of a knot of fans shouting for "The Underdog". "What's that?" he jibed, just before launching into an energetic rendition of the hit single, aided by a percussionist from protege act White Rabbits. That's Spoon for you: give the people what they want.
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