The steady ascent of Spoon

With each new release, the Austin band has gotten better and better

By Michael Corcoran
AMERICAN-STATESMAN MUSIC WRITER
Thursday, July 09, 2009

Britt Daniel remembers everything about the first time Spoon played Stubb's - the inside room - because it was the only show bassist Hunter Darby (Wannabes) played with the group. 'It was 1996 and I'm gonna say December,' says Daniel, whose band takes over Stubb's 2,100-capacity outdoor amphitheater tonight through Saturday.

Twelve and a half years ago, on the heels of the release of debut LP 'Telephono,' Spoon played to an audience of maybe 50. This time they're the hometown heroes, who've had a Top 10 album (2007's 'Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga') and appeared on 'Saturday Night Live,' as well as Leno, Letterman, Conan and the like.

Back in 1996, Daniel used to keep a piece of paper in his wallet that listed his favorite local bands, in case a club booker asked him who he'd like to open for Spoon. 'Pork, Glorium, Euripides Pants, Prescott Curlywolf, Teen Titans, Sincola, Magneto USA, Big Drag, Enduro ?' The list went on for 24 more names.

'For these shows (at Stubb's) we have the means to fly in some of our favorite acts,' Daniel said. Tonight's openers are Quasi and Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears (a Spoon discovery), with Low and Dale Watson opening Friday and Atlas Sound and the Strange Boys setting the table on Saturday.

Daniel said the SpoonX3 fest grew out of a desire to play a big outdoor summer show in the band's hometown. It has the ring of an annual event, but the attitude right now is wait-and-see.

After the shows, the band heads to Brooklyn to finish their seventh album. The only pressure is that Spoon has recorded six albums and each one has been slightly better than its predecessor.

'All I know is that it has to be awfully good,' Daniel said of the next album, rejecting the idea that it has to top 'Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga' and 'Gimme Fiction.' Lucky for Spoon fans, Daniel is a songwriter who seems in no danger of drying up.

Think it's not possible for a band to record six albums that are better than the one before it? Let's recap.

Debut album 'Telephono' (1996) was a punk-y first effort, showing flashes of Daniel's huge melodic gift, yet drawing too-easy comparisons to Wire and the Pixies.

In 1998, Spoon released 'A Series of Sneaks' on Elektra, which dropped the band four months later. It's a solid record, as much a showcase of drummer Jim Eno's musicality ('30 Gallon Tank') as Daniel's songsmith, but 'Metal Detektor' was a taste of things to come.

After the Elektra fiasco, Spoon thought about chucking it and, to pay the bills, Daniel signed on as a substitute teacher. When the phone would ring at 6 a.m., he'd pray that the call wouldn't be from a middle school. 'That was the worst place to try to teach,' he said.

After signing to Merge, the band rebounded nicely in 2001 with 'Girls Can Tell,' whose leadoff track 'Everything Hits at Once' was a song of the times.

Although it was dwarfed by the success of 2005's 'Gimme Fiction,' which gave us omnipresence to dance to with 'I Turn My Camera On,' 2002's 'Kill the Moonlight' is a driving album that uses guitar only when it needs to. Spoon had indie rock hits with 'The Way We Get By' and 'Small Stakes,' but 'Stay Don't Go' and 'Back to the Life' are just as good and even more adventurous. The album also included a kiss-off to a middle school bully, 'Jonathon Fisk,' proving that rocking out is the best revenge.

With Mike McCarthy pitching in with the boys, the impeccably produced 'Moonlight' set a new standard for Spoon, one they were somehow able to surpass with 'Gimme Fiction,' which 'Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga' needed horns to top.

'We're had some setbacks, but that only makes you appreciate it more when things go right,' Daniel said by phone from Portland, Ore., a town he really loves, even if there's no easy way to fly into Austin, where he spends several weeks a year writing songs, rehearsing and eating at Matt's El Rancho.

Spoon recorded the perfect pop song, 'I Summon You,' in a cottage house studio in Tarrytown. They've played the big stages of Coachella, Lollapalooza and the Austin City Limits Music Festival. By being inventive without being heady, they live in the hippest of iPods.

But they've never forgot about the time they played the small room of Stubb's with no other gigs lined up.

SpoonX3

Three nights - tonight through Saturday - at Stubb's, 801 Red River St. $20-$28. 480-8341; stubbsaustin.com.