Spoon goes 'Ga Ga' over its newfound fame
When we spoke with Spoon drummer Jim Eno late last month, he had his fingers crossed for some terrible sketches at a dress rehearsal of "Saturday Night Live." Eno's not anti-comedy, but he had heard that sometimes they only let the band play one song when the skits are cooking, and he wanted to make the most of Spoon's moment on the national network stage.
Something must have tanked because the Austin pop-rockers got a pair of chances to shine a light on their recent CD release, "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga." That kind of good fortune has been happening a lot for the band, formed in 1994 by Eno and singer-songwriter-frontman Britt Daniel and featuring assorted players over the years. Spoon has been playing bigger and better gigs, and watched "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" debut at No. 10 on the Billboard albums chart in July, an impressive feat for an indie band that's relied on word of mouth, not radio, to build their audience. (Eno pronounces the title in a rapid-fire manner that he says is meant to mimic the staccato piano riff that opens the second tune, "The Ghost of You Lingers"). Spoon plays a sold-out show at the Roxy tonight.
Q. Even though you've always had pop melodies at your core, your sound has evolved over the years and "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" may be your most refined record yet. Have your influences changed?
A. I think influences do change as you move along. You always discover new things. But we do work really, really hard at making each song stand out on its own. Also, we try not to repeat ourselves with respect to how a song feels.
Q. Songs like "Don't You Evah" and "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb" are danceable and have these great wriggly guitar lines. Other songs feature horns and tambourines and evoke Motown. But in every case, no matter how many sounds there are, the production remains very stark. Why do you guys like to record that way?
A. We have always taken the approach that it doesn't get on the record unless it's really needed or it helps the song in some way. So we talk about a lot of the little things and make sure that the song builds as it moves along, and if something is not needed, it's not used. We like sparse arrangements.
Q. Does that production choice come from a specific inspiration?
A. No, I just think that's how we've always worked, back to the very, very early days. But you know you hear records like - Queen records come to mind. If you listen to some of those they're incredibly sparse, but as the sounds come out they have so much more impact. You listen to "Another One Bites the Dust" and that song is unbelievably sparse. The guitar doesn't play all the way through it, there's a different verse part, there's big chords that come in occasionally and very surprisingly, it's pretty amazing.
Q. Throughout the record you included snippets of studio chatter, some of it funny, some of it, quite frankly, kind of spooky. Whose idea was it to leave that in?
A. That was a lot of spontaneity there. It's weird because when you record analog there's all these sounds that happen all throughout the recording process, and then as you keep doing overdubs those become part of the song. So they become funny and exciting to you as you listen to them more and more, and when you go in to mix and you remove those, it sounds really empty. So we ended up picking the most special ones and leaving those in there.
Q. Britt is the primary songwriter, but do you make suggestions or tweaks? Is he open to being collaborative?
A. Everyone voices their opinion, we try a ton of different ideas. He'll usually bring them in either completely done or almost done or just snippets to see how to approach them and then we'll work on them, and sometimes he'll go back and chew on that for awhile and bring it back to us and see how it's working.
Q. In the press materials for the album you claim that you have it on good authority that 36 minutes is the perfect album length and cite records like Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska" and the Smiths' "The Queen Is Dead." What other authorities did you consult?
A. (laughs) We did countless hours of research, many, many months, and that's what it pointed to.
Sarah Rodman can be reached at srodman@globe.com, for more music go to boston.com/ae/ music/blog
