Tag: Spoon

soundstreamsunday: “Can I Sit Next To You” by Spoon

On By Craig BreadenIn art rock, Rock and RollLeave a comment

spoonThe connections are clear, right? Michael Karoli’s cousin and girlfriend were the cover models for Roxy Music‘s album Country Life (1974); Spoon names itself after a song by Karoli’s band Can; and if Spoon isn’t America’s Roxy Music then I’m buying a ticket to Cologne and getting this all figured out for good.  Spoon is the rock art band of the moment and of many previous moments, their career now in its twenty-somethingth year.  Released this spring, the band’s latest, Hot Thoughts, along with LCD Soundsystem’s American Dream, gives the lie to what is otherwise a general truism: rock bands are a young person’s game.  A killer set of songs with a sustained, youthful definition, Hot Thoughts makes me search my brain for other great rock records made by folks who are my age.  A real, original rock record.  With guts and balls and great songwriting and absolutely no fat.  Not something worthy of elder statesmen or something celebrated by NPR for the maturity of its grizzled veterans, but damn, something that makes you want to dance and call out its lyrics without having much of a history with the band (and I don’t).

When Britt Daniel sings “I’ve been working on a plan, yeah” on “Can I Sit Next To You” he makes it feel like the most important words ever uttered.  Part of this is his voice, which as rock vocals go is, as my 10-year-old would say, “savage, yo” (really).  A mix of John Lennon, Iggy Pop, and Lee Mavers, Daniel can do falsetto soul back-to-back with a nasal/glottal/punky growl.  This was the territory of the giants of early 70s British rock as it morphed into pub and punk, the White Album (yeah and maybe some Marvin Gaye…and Can…) in one hand and a lager in the other.  So, everything is a hook but all the hooks have a Martin-esque depth of detail, flourish, and care, and a slightly shifted off-ness that makes it a slow, satisfying grower.  When in the middle of the song the bulbs pop and the keyboards go eastern psychedelic, it opens the horizon and we’re getting a thumbnail funk view of the Arabian Peninsula.  Sick — maybe the Cure would have thought of this but wouldn’t have been so economical, and there is whiff of “Fascination Street” lingering in the background.  Jim Eno’s boss kick drum brings it back to old school, and if you’re like me you’re waiting for that crazy keyboard bit one more time, and it does come, hallelujah.  With all it makes me think about, still…this is a conjuring music, an act of devotion not imitation.  Song ’bout kicks and the lengths you might go to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOKjTIbj1JI

soundstreamsunday presents one song or live set by an artist each week, and in theory wants to be an infinite linear mix tape where the songs relate and progress as a whole. For the complete playlist, go here: soundstreamsunday archive and playlist, or check related articles by clicking on”soundstreamsunday” in the tags section.

soundstreamsunday: “Spoon” by Can

On By Craig BreadenIn avant-garde, krautrock, progressive rockLeave a comment
Can2
Michael Karoli, Irmin Schmidt, Holger Czukay, Jaki Liebzeit, and Damo Suzuki, circa 1972.

Across five albums and five years Can rendered the categories meaningless and set the bar for the kind of rock future that would make stars out of bands like Radiohead; there’s probably an argument that theirs is still the standard.  Like the better so-called “krautrock” bands of the era, Can’s music sounds like little else, and the environment supporting such freedom became a magnet for American and British artists looking to stretch (Keith Jarrett, Brian Eno, David Bowie).  But for such a self-styled experimental rock band, Can’s music is as accessible as it is confounding, a beautiful cut-and-paste mess controlled by disciplined musicianship (and editing).  Noise, psychedelia, jazz, funk, world, new and no music vie for space in the grooves, battling, more often than not, to equal victory.

By the time Can came to make 1972’s Ege Bamyasi they’d navigated a path through narcotic claustrophobia (Monster Movie‘s V.U.-summoning “Father Cannot Yell,”), cling-clang guitar trance (Soundtracks‘ “Mother Sky”) and long-form boogie freakout (Tago Mago‘s “Halleluwah”) butted up against concrete pieces that, to paraphrase Julian Cope, were guaranteed to clear the room at parties.  On Ege Bamyasi they tighten the bolts — at least on record, as live footage from the time shows vocalist Damo Suzuki doing everything to not play along, with varying degrees of success — and come up with an album that contains, in the context of Can’s musical universe, a slew of pop-shaded nuggets.  “Spoon” distilled all previous impulses into a succinct 3-minute masterpiece of Suzuki no-sense, Jaki Liebzeit clockwork, and Michael Karoli string-slinging wizardry, with Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt binding it all together.

It’s the perfect mixtape “link” song: rhythmic, catchy, weird.  It was a hit in Germany, adopted for a TV thriller and selling hundreds of thousands of copies.  Successful bands have named themselves after it.  It was and is — attractively to young, arty and ambitious Americans — roundly ignored in the States along with the rest of Can’s stunning catalog.  And even unto itself it’s a marvelous thing.

soundstreamsunday presents one song or live set by an artist each week, and in theory wants to be an infinite linear mix tape where the songs relate and progress as a whole. For the complete playlist, go here: soundstreamsunday archive and playlist, or check related articles by clicking on”soundstreamsunday” in the tags section.