Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga: Round 115(?), Nick’s choice

Amazingly, it doesn’t seem as if I’ve ever written anything about Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. Googling my name and pseudonym alongside the album title brings up pretty much nothing, which is crazy, because this has been one of my favourite records for about 17 years. So much for just copying and pasting something I’d written ages ago and slapping a new intro on it…

Anyway, I had intended to play Heaven or Las Vegas by Cocteau Twins, but then Steve pulled out Blue Bell Knoll, so I decided we’d have a Cocteau only child, and plumped for my plan b instead. My instruction was to bring something you know well but haven’t listened to in a while, inspired by the purchase of a new hi-fi system following some… incidents… over the Christmas period. It was an indulgent purchase, but necessary (the 18-year-old amplifier may have been full of cat hair that set alight), and I’m still very much in love with it, hearing new details in records I know well…

One of the most revelatory moments came with Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, and specifically “The Ghost of You Lingers”, which I liked, but nowhere near as much as the snaky grooves (copyright Rob Mitchell) or big, brash pop moments (also copyright Rob Mitchell). Suddenly, with an expanded soundstage (apologies for audiowanker terminology) pulling extra layers of detail and feeling out, it transformed into something completely different. In fact, the whole album, which I’d always thought was just a mite over-compressed at mastering, stretched out and expanded and breathed in a way I’d never heard before.

Spoon get away with stuff I would laugh in the face of other bands for even trying. Like having a song called “Rhythm and Soul”, and another called “Merchants of Soul”, and another that’s about “a Japanese cigarette case” that makes no sense. Maybe the Spooniest song on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga isn’t even by them: I was astonished to realise, months in, that “Don’t You Evah” is a cover of a song by a band they toured with once. “Finer Feelings” and “The Underdog” are just unimpeachable. “Black Like Me” closes the album with perfect Ringo drums. There’s no magic or sorcery at play in what Spoon do – they’re not weaving entirely new sounds that no one else has imagined – but maybe there’s some alchemy, in that they take base materials and turn them into gold.

When I listen to Spoon I get a very strong sense of wanting to be in a band that rehearses in a big double garage in an Austin suburb, where they leave the big double garage door open because it’s sunny and there’s grass outside and you’re just with your buddies and you’ve been in this band forever and you just do it because it’s fun and simple and you like doing it, and all your songs are about the dayjobs you’ve had, and the local paper you used to read, and that guy from a few blocks away who had a ride-on lawnmower even though his yard was tiny, and the malt shop you go to (or take your kids to, as you get older) (whatever a malt shop is). And I’m from Devon and have never been and will probably never go to Texas, and I’ve never really wanted to be in a band. But Spoon make me want to be in a band, especially from Kill the Moonlight onwards through Transference. That four album run is just perfect, and everything either side is so damn good too that it might as well be perfect.

Steve listened: I love this album too, and like Nick I can almost imagine myself in a band like Spoon….if I had any musical talent. They effortlessly make great music that avoids cheesy clichés, and yet on the face of it they could easily fall into that trap were they not just damn brilliant.