In Stores Now: Transference by Spoon

Illustration from The Pearl and the Pumpkin by Paul West and W.W. Denslow, 1904

I'm glad I didn't try to write about Transference right away - I was tempted to write it off after a few listens. I would have said something like, "Britt Daniel and Jim Eno have decided to take my least favorite thing in the Spoon discography, the monotonous four songs at the end of 2005's Gimme Fiction, and base a whole album on that sound." I still stand by that comparison, actually, but now that I've gotten to know the album a little better, I think that Transference works well in spite of it. Obviously, the lack of immediate hooks was frustrating at first, but the guys in Spoon know what they're doing, and it's hard to believe that they made a hookless album by accident. By removing that instant gratification that I've always looked for in the "ear candy" songs they've included in every album until now, they force the listener to focus on the songs' immaculate sound design and subtler melodic turns. And it works - the songs on Transference take on an almost-catchiness when you stop looking for the hooks and really get into the songs as "pop soundscapes" instead.

Transference's opening track, "Before Destruction", does what a Spoon opening track usually does - it uses droning and repetition to set the stage for what's to come. It starts with a wavering organ sound that disappears when Daniel begins singing - for the first few bars, his singing is distant and accompanied by a demo-like, dry acoustic guitar sound. Then, a more produced vocal and guitar sound replace the "demo" sound, and the organ drone comes back. This patching together of rough and smooth sounds, together with the abrupt adding and removal of ingredients in the palette, is what Transference is all about. This approach creates an almost vertigo-like unbalance at first, particularly in its most extreme applications in the album's first half. "Is Love Forever?" begins with Daniel intentionally singing slightly a little behind the song's beat in an offputting way before settling into a Soft Effects-style groove. "The Mystery Zone" is the highlight of the album's first side, with a more accessible melody, but it lulls you into complacency only to pull the rug out by cutting off suddenly in the middle of the title phrase at the end. The album's first half ends with "Written in Reverse", one of the album's immaculately rough-around-the-edges rockers, but I'd like it a lot more if not for its obnoxious opening couplet: "I'm writing this to you in reverse / Someone better call a hearse."

That line is terrible, but it's a bit of a red herring because the lyrics on Transference are an overall improvement over previous albums. Lines like, "Some ex-girlfriend, call her Heather / Whispers to me "Is lover forever?" and "Everyone loves you for your black eye / They feast on the abundance of your house," are as memorable as anything Daniel has written in the past. The lyrics take a bit of a back seat on the album's second half, but it's okay because these songs are very sonically interesting - it may be one of the strongest six-song sequences Spoon has put together, from the long jam of "I Saw the Light" to the piano ballad of "Goodnight Laura". It's probably not too surprising that the GBV-aping "Trouble Comes Running" is my favorite track on the album, but the initially-underwhelming single "Got Nuffin" also has a scrappy charm when placed deep in the batting order at track ten.

By the time you get to the glitchy, cut-and-paste piano vamping outro of "Nobody Gets Me But You", the album closer, it's hard not to be impressed that Spoon has managed to make an album that is memorable, if not immediate, without delivering a "I Turn My Camera On", "The Underdog", or "That's the Way We Get By". Some people probably won't be able to get past the lack of standout tracks, and this just isn't the album for them. But there's a lot to like in Transference if you do a little digging.

"Trouble Comes Running" by Spoon

"Waiting for the Kid to Come Out" by Spoon