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Live review: Spoon at the Scoot Inn
Laura Skelding AMERICAN-STATESMAN
- Photos: Spoon at the Scoot Inn
Although Tuesday night’s Spoon show at the Scoot Inn was one of the toughest tickets (all 650 were sold out in 15 minutes) in town, the 90-minute show had a somewhat relaxed feel, with the band woodshedding new numbers like show-opening “Writing To You In Reverse,” then bringing it home with such old faves as “Everything Hits At Once,” “Small Stakes” and a horn-free “The Underdog.”
Britt Daniel’s array of guitars (which all sounded exactly the same) kept falling out of tune and during the start of “My Mathematical Mind” he turned the tuning pegs while singing the intro.
In part because of the minimalist p.a., it felt like seeing Austin’s third greatest band of all time (behind Willie Nelson and Family and the 13th Floor Elevators) at a backyard barbecue, although the bulging veins in Daniel’s neck when he sang “They Never Got You” and “Don’t Make Me a Target” showed the band took this gig seriously. “I Summon You” was a highlight, with Daniel and his three co-horts adding smokiness to the sturdy strum of the recorded version.
“Can you hear us way in the back?” Daniel asked after humbly thanking the crowd for enduring so much new material. “Hell, no!” one fan shouted back. Up front at the open air venue in East Austin it was plenty loud, but with a sound system that resembled a pair of hanging suitcases, this warmup show for Spoon’s Jazzfest bow Friday had the neighbors in mind.
Thankfully, the show wasn’t as jampacked as feared, with promoters selling 200 tix fewer than capacity, knowing the guestlist for these hometown heroes would be several pages long. About 100 fans listened from outside the back fence.
This was a show with nothing to promote. Spoon is currently working on a new album, but there’s no deadline in place and the LP may not come out for another nine or ten months. One thing the new songs seemed to have in common is the way they ended, with jazzy guitar workouts that dissolved into silence.
We’ve watched Spoon evolve from lazy (though accurate) comparisons to the Pixies into an angular guitar band and then saw them ascend to the indie rock throne after they discovered electric piano, disco basslines and falsetto vocals. But they seem at a bit of a standstill right now. A couple of new songs were really good, but nothing stood out like the first time hearing “Sister Jack.”
Expect a long wait for the followup to “Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.”
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