Spoon has some of the most consistent output of any other modern rock band. Review aggregator Metacritic named it as the best-reviewed band of the decade, culminating with 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, and now we have Transference, a sparser and more challenging, but just as rewarding, outing. Meanwhile, Deerhunter is still touring in support of its critically acclaimed 2008 album Microcastle and playing songs both from it and from companion bonus disc Weird Era Cont.
This past Saturday, the House of Blues brought as winning an indie rock lineup as a fan can hope for: Spoon with Deerhunter, and garage rock outfit Strange Boys opening. Unfortunately for concertgoers, House of Blues changed the show time at the last second, so several fans, myself included, expecting it to start later, missed part or all of Deerhunter’s set.
Deerhunter finished its set with some of its most memorable songs: in “Nothing Ever Happened,” frontman Bradford Cox tortured his guitar in an extended improvisational section, while the rollicking bassline and 4/4 krautrock drumming kept his noodling grounded. The band transitioned into “Microcastle” with a dreamy interlude, heavily layering guitars to an almost dizzying degree and volume. The band revamped the second, faster part of “Microcastle” into a sped-up waltz, which swayed hypnotically instead of pummeling the ears, as on the record. A drunken Cox then called into the audience for someone named Rob for several minutes before yelling, “Operation, finish set in four minutes!” referring to their time constraint, and the band powered through the alternately chugging and loping “Operation” to the end of their set.
After a slew of identical-sounding blues songs from the PA, Spoon took the stage, with front man Britt Daniel strumming the first chords of “Before Destruction” even before the house music started to fade out. Like much of their performance, this sparse opener added up to more than the sum of its parts, with a wobbly organ humming under Daniel’s guitar for a full sound. The band then played the closer from its latest album, “Nobody Gets Me Like You,” which was given an especially funky spin with the rhythm section while Daniel’s guitar sounds became more and more jagged over keyboardist Eric Harvey’s seemingly random piano clutter.
Although the set was tipped heavily toward material from Transference, the band rocked some fan favorites as well, giving them diverse treatments. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga‘s “You Got Yr Cherry Bomb” found Daniel crooning through the verses with flourishes of vocal echoes while the band kept a propulsive rhythm, and “Don’t Make Me a Target” was pounding an urgent, with Daniel yelping the title line. They also played several songs from 2002’s classic Kill the Moonlight, such as the rhythmic “Stay Don’t Go” and the slow build of “Vittorio E.” “Metal School,” from 1998’s A Series of Sneaks, swung freely as Daniel delivered a wistful melody.
Other highlights included “Who Makes Your Money,” which sounded ominous and understated, with both Harvey and bassist Rob Pope overlapping vocals with Daniel, again sounding fuller than would be expected from its simple components. “Don’t You Evah” features one of Spoon’s most memorable basslines, and the band sang in a round to give the slinky song extra depth.
Some songs, however, fell somewhat flat in the live setting. Without the triumphant horns of the studio recording, “The Underdog” was punctuated instead with tinny-sounding piano chords, and the repetitive structure of “I Turn My Camera On” dragged instead of stomping, though the band used a distorted keyboard sound to liven it up.
Spoon closed the show solidly in an encore of “Something to Look Forward To,” “Is Love Forever?” and “Finer Feelings,” with the first two as an energetic one-two punch of brief pop songs and the last drenched in reverb over a bouncing bassline. They seemed rushed, mentioning their 10 o’clock curfew so that the venue could be given over to a dance party, but the energy with which they left the audience was almost worth the rush and the rearranged time slots. If anything, Spoon isn’t terribly surprising live &-&- aside from a few minor tweaks (and, in the case of “The Underdog,” shortcomings), the band doesn’t sound much different from the record, so if you go to see them expecting to have a new favorite song that was brilliantly realized on stage, you might be disappointed.
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