The world is an awful mess but the new Spoon album, They Want My Soul, is amazing! Best Spoon album since … well, at least since Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. (Better than Transference, then.) They did a live, 9-song performance for KEXP, Seattle, including many of the new songs. You can watch that here. But I think the studio versions sound better.
So here’s the thing: they’ve always had a Beatle-y thing going on, Spoon, but “I Just Don’t Understand” is – after the first few seconds – such a Lennon/McCartney Please Please Me kind of 1963 tune. Right? Pleasant! [UPDATE: Aaaand it turns out actually to be a cover of a song the Beatles covered, which I never heard before, because I don’t own Live at the BBC.] But “Knock Knock Knock” – correct me if I’m wrong – sounds a bit like, I dunno, Pink Floyd mid-70’s. (After the first few seconds.) Kinda David Gilmour guitar, then swoopy anthem stuff. Sort of a different sound for Spoon. I like it.
Now everyone tell me it doesn’t sound like Pink Floyd at all.
{ 13 comments }
Niall McAuley 08.12.14 at 3:38 pm
I get more of a Peter Gabriel from about 1980 than Pink Floyd.
Still good, though.
Anderson 08.12.14 at 4:21 pm
Under the malign influence of Matt Yglesias, I bought a couple of Spoon albums, whose names I’m not sure I recall because they did absolutely nothing for me. Kill the Moonlight was one, and maybe the Ga Ga Ga … one as well. I just have to accept that I have limitations.
Layman 08.12.14 at 5:43 pm
Definitely a Pink Floyd sound there, somewhere between the ‘Wish You Were Here’ and ‘The Wall” LPs. Though I hear Pater Gabriel too.
I don’t get the Beatles nearly as much, except to the extent that everyone sounds a bit like the Beatles.
Thanks for the tip – I like this stuff!
Ronan(rf) 08.12.14 at 7:36 pm
I had a friend who taught himself to play the spoons (very poorly, unfortunately)
Bjorn 08.12.14 at 8:29 pm
“I Just Don’t Understand” is an old Ann-Margret song from 1961.
Jim 08.12.14 at 9:00 pm
It is very good. “I Just Don’t Understand” was originally performed by Ann-Margret and, fitting with your Beatles reference, produced by George Margaret.
Beatles later covered it live .
Jim 08.12.14 at 9:00 pm
Ugh. George Martin. Not George Margaret.
trizzlor 08.12.14 at 10:56 pm
Please, Please, Me? Surely you mean Live at the BBC ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EeFTLD_iN0 )
John Holbo 08.12.14 at 11:15 pm
trizzlor, I had never heard “I just don’t understand” before. I don’t own Live at the BBC. That is quite hilarious. I didn’t know it actually was a Beatles song. Or rather – as I now learn – a cover by the Beatles of someone else’s song.
John Holbo 08.12.14 at 11:19 pm
Sorry to give trizzlor special credit. Everyone else was just stuck in moderation because, evidently, Ann-Margaret is such a racy name that it gets you stuck in moderation.
Greg 08.13.14 at 12:19 am
Stuck In Moderation, wasn’t that the name of Pink Floyd’s box set?
John Holbo 08.13.14 at 12:39 am
Reflecting back, I think I must have heard the song at some point and filed it away subconsciously. Then the new version reminded me strongly of the Beatles but I couldn’t pull up any mental file for it that said “Beatles” so I declared it a perfect Lennon/McCartney tune. Probably I could have Googled, eh?
The Pink Floyd box set (Googling) seems to be “Oh, by the way”.
Erik Stenius 08.14.14 at 3:02 pm
A.-M.’s version of the song was recorded in Nashville and produced by Chet Atkins (together with somebody called Dick Peirce, according to the credits on the record – probably a staff producer for RCA). Nothing to do with George Martin.
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