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Spoon
 It took nearly a decade before the indie rock of Spoon made it to Australia with their song The Way We Get By from their fourth album 'Kill The Moonlight' (2002). They backed this up with 'Gimme Fiction' containing the Triple J fave Sister Jack and now Britt Daniel (vocals/guitar) is keen to talk about their new release, interestingly titled 'Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga'. "Yeah, that was the working title for one of the songs on the album, because that is the sound of the piano in The Ghost Of You Lingers, and we got a kick out of calling an album that."
As slow as Australia may have been to catch onto Spoon, we have certainly not been the slowest. "We've put out just about every record in Europe, but coming to Australia seems like a vacation compared to going to Europe where it seems very few people know us. I don't know if it's the sound or if it's that everyone there is so cued into the UK press and for whatever reason, whether it's the boring band name or because we are of age, they are not into us as much."
Although initially hailing from Austin, Texas, Daniel now lives in Portland, a city that is famous for its music scene. "Portland is a great city to live in; it's a pretty liberal city, really green with an exciting downtown. Austin is liberal too, but you certainly feel like you are on a tiny island surrounded by the rest of Texas. I've met a lot of people here [in Portland]; I know the Sleater-Kinney girls pretty well. I've hung out with Stephen Malkmus a couple of times, there's also Dandy Warhols, M Ward and Death Cab For Cutie [who Spoon recently toured with]."
When asked about the five-month recording of the new album at Jim Eno's (bass player) home studio, Daniel's first response was a heavy sigh before remarking, "It was sometimes fun, but often difficult. About halfway through, we had been working on it for a couple of months and I felt like I couldn't remember when we hadn't been doing it. It just felt like this record would never end. I broke up with my girlfriend over that time so it was a pretty dark time, sleeping on a crappy futon, it was hard work."
However, heartbreak and the associated melancholy often has a way of inspiring amazing music, Daniel goes on to explain. "My favourite songs from this record were the most personal songs. They seemed to reflect what was going on at the time like The Ghost Of You Lingers and Black Like Me or Cherry Bomb. The day we recorded Black Like Me I remember feeling this is exactly how I feel. That emotional aspect isn't usually present during recording, it's normally during the writing process, but this album was different."
One of the most striking aspects of Spoon is the interesting vocabulary in their lyrics which they match with their infectious pop melodies. The only song I have ever heard use the word 'taciturn' is Spoon's The Way We Get By. "That was just the case of needing to rhyme with whatever came before. I was like 'what goes with 'discern'?' and what I came up with was 'taciturn'. And I guess it was fortunate that song is all just a series of statements that all start with 'we' so it could all be pieced together."
So what is it like to write a golden pop song? "I don't think anything like that is going to get airplay, but I do know when I've got one that is a good one. That's the best feeling in the world; it doesn't happen very often, but when it does it's just great. When I did write The Way We Get By, it was written really fast and I remember knowing that one was really good."
Another quirky Spoon lyric is "I was in this drop D metal band we called Requiem" from Sister Jack. "Our former bass player was in a metal band called Requiem in high school and he had told us some stories about his band and he played us the cassette they had made and it was terrible. So I thought it would be funny to be at a practice singing this line that included this band called Requiem; he got it and giggled."
Scott Berry
'Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga' is out now on Spunk.
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