REVIEW: Spoon, A Series Of Sneaks (Elektra)
- Jason Cahill
When I was in college, I remember reading an album review in, of all places, New York Magazine. The album was World Party's Goodbye Jumbo and the reviewer kept talking about how it had been in his CD player for three straight weeks and he still enjoyed listening to it from start to finish. At this point I hadn't heard one song off the album and yet, based on this one review, shelled out my fourteen bucks and bought it. Again, without having heard one song. My thinking was that if this reviewer could listen to one album consistently for three straight weeks without growing tired of it, then it must be good. And it was.
Granted, Spoon's major label debut, A Series Of Sneaks, isn't quite the album that Goodbye Jumbo was, but it has remained stuck in my CD player for the past three weeks. If it were a record, I surely would have worn down the grooves by now. The album, the third release from this Austin based trio, is an original collection of finely crafted rock tunes, each with its own unique and different sound. In fact, the album's twelve songs are so unique and different from one another, its almost as if the band threw ideas at a wall to see what would stick. A similar method of song selection was tried earlier this year by Scott Weiland to much different and unfortunate results.
The album opens with "Utilitarian", a quick, right to the point song which owes more to Brit-rockers like Blur than it does to the Austin sound Spoon helped establish. "The Guest List / The Execution" borrows its guitar riff from INXS' "Guns In The Sky", while the bridge in "Reservations" might as easily found itself in the middle of a Manic Street Preachers record. The most obscure influence on the album is found in "Metal Detektor", whose verses are reminiscent of Jackson Browne, circa "Lawyers In Love". Does all this detract from the overall sound of the album? Not at all. In fact, it helps separate Spoon from all the other run-of-the-mill alt-rock bands. Each song on A Series Of Sneaks is completely different from the last, with different melodies, structures and tempos.
In all, A Series Of Sneaks is an album overflowing with effort. It's almost as if the band just said, "Fuck it, we're going to try everything and if it works, great; if it doesn't, so be it." The really masterful thing about the album is that it works.
