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January 2010 - Week 4

SPOON
Transference
Released 25/01/10; Anti

The William Eggleston cover photo of a disconnected young man looking away from a partially pictured and faceless woman, along with the psychological inferences of its title, more than hint that with their latest release Spoon have finally found a topic worthy of Britt Daniels song writing skills.


Up until now Spoon have apparently had no real purpose propelling them forward other than the quest to produce great sounding music and while this may seem to some as a churlish complaint to make of a musician such tendencies have often had the effect of producing songs which are aurally superior empty vessels; great music has rarely been purely about the sound in and of its self. However 'Transference' sees the group find the extra dimension they have previously lacked and finally promotes the group to the top rank.


As with 1970's Dylan, it is a break up album that lifts the artistic haziness and provides the sharp, clear sting from which a creative vision can come forth. The album is riddled with so much confusion, pain, bitterness and recrimination, with the humiliation of rejection, the nostalga for something crucial and lost forever and most of all the awful doubt, perhaps even manifesting itself as a certainty, that 'it' may never be experienced again; it is an album about the death of love.

So, fittingly, while previous Spoon albums have typically opened with a finely cut gem of pop perfection, 'Transference' sets the desolate scene with a barely-of-this-world dirge in the shape of 'Before Destruction', an icy look back at the world collapsing. 'Is Love Forever?' sounds more like the Spoon of old but only at surface level and the song soon fractures into shards as Daniels casts himself in the doubting Thomas role. 'Is love forever?' he asks 'Have I even felt it ever?'

The album, which could never be accused of being front loaded like so many these days, builds through the unhinged David Bowie style 'Written In Reverse' - a song which could easily have featured on the latters 'Low' - to the albums extraordinary centre piece 'I Saw The Light' which ebbs and flows, starts and stops, rises and falls like the tormenting emotional oscillations of a recently jettisoned lover. The numb nostalgic look back at a lost relationship which is 'Out Go The Lights' will most likely make even the most hardened heart blanch at the pathos of it all. The album ends with the transcendental funk of 'Nobody Gets Me But You' but as in real life there is no real emotional closure, it almost seems that after all the suffering, all the pained internalized scrutiny, that some unpalatable truth cannot be accepted.

Superbly well played and produced, 'Transference' carries an emotional resonance rarely found in an age which perpetrates the idea that nothing really matters much beyond the experience of the immediate instant. Some things are affecting enough that they warrant the instigation of soul searching down to the core of our very being. It's what makes us human. Now Spoon's music is human also.

VOGELENZANGRANK: 7.45

Sample track - Spoon - 'Is Love Forever?'