The Mo and The Ro

While I may not have taken advantage – having the iTunes store offering   for this album was tempting. The thing with online music buying however is one doesn’t need to reserve their copy. The album was released on January 19 on iTunes, and marks the 7th major release in the band’s 15 year career.

Essentially this album is what I consider to be a slow burner. The tracks really do not deviate into any brave new territory comparable to the last outing – 2007s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. The vein feels the same and the building blocks for the tracks are based on a familiar foundation.

This said however, the release of the first single Got Nuffin ahead of the album release resulted in some major anticipatory action from the fan base – myself included. Why? Because these bastards can write an effing hook. Currently as I write this sentence Got Nuffin is playing and it’s hooked right into my cerebral cortex or wherever good songs go to stay embedded forever (or conversely where terrible songs go to drive you slowly over the edge as you find yourself whistling it randomly – see 1980s)

Starting up the album, introductory track  Before Destruction gives an impression of the band taking a musical step beyond – unfortunately it’s really the only such example, as the following track Is Love Forever? demonstrates – Spoon is doing here what it does best, but new ground is not being broken here, more like an addition onto an existing structure.

Now despite my previous words (less I am contradictory to the bitter end) there are some deviations from the standard Spoon-esque song building mechanism. Well, I say deviation, but in reality Spoon has always had the occasional track that will explore a different sound to a certain degree, they will experiment. Which is why I feel my previous statement still stands – this is not brave new territory.

(i will admit to be enjoying this contradictory nature)

Who Makes Your Money is a prime example of this – small touches of something different, or a different effect. This is why we can have a band like Spoon who has a sound that is very much their own, buy who can have release after release in this very sound and yet there is no repeating, nothing gets tired. I know about this effect very much, I’m a former pop-punk fan who after the Nth band that sounded like Screeching Weasel hit the scene, called it a day – and I know that was a real thing because I played in such a band.

This really is an album written with two demographics in mind – those who will hear the singles as first time listeners and get hooked – something I have always felt Spoon does with ridiculously fantastic ability, and those fans likes myself who want to hear the album unfold on multiple listens. The slow burn.

Also incidentally if someone told me this whole album was written with a particular person in mind, with the tracks spelling out the story of two people’s story of their time together, I would agree 100%. In fact consider this me telling you I feel this is the case. Stylistically this album feels as if it is grappling with the stages of acceptance of a relationship falling apart. Got Nuffin sounds entirely different when viewed in this  this context, it’s no longer just the hook, but now the stage where one feels that they need to do whatever they can to keep the other person – one last Hail Mary . This is the stage right before the full on grief hits, or right before one would feel as if Nobody Gets Me But You. This was written after the fact, which Written in Reverse admits – the love song to commemorate the relationship that just happened to come too late:

“…And I hear that famous song / When I hear it I can’t be wrong / I know nothing was planned, and you just can’t help yourself / Some people are so easily shuffled and dealt…”