It was never in doubt.  Lightweight Contender and Freshface continue to be a lethal combination – check out my review of Spoon’s new record Transference here (and below).

Stick and move, stick and move...

Release Date: January 19, 2010
Label: Merge

We all have different aspects to our selves.  We want to be everywhere and we want to be everything – and it all has to be now.  Some of us are diagnosed schizophrenics and some of us are just better at putting up the normal, balanced front.  Better at maintaining appearances, controlling the undercurrent.  The point is, we all have both the burden and the luxury to wade through the competing urges and be who we want to be, but that idea’s a moving target.  

You can run long distances in the morning and smoke a pack of Camel filters the same night.  The same person can sling mortgage-backed securities for AIG and volunteer at the local homeless shelter.  It’s part of the human condition.  Even if you’re not exactly human – say you’re Satan for example – I gotta believe this dynamic is the same.  You spend your days instigating some motherfucking chaos and generally championing the satanic cause.  And when Lucifer goes about his day, we can all agree that metal is what’s blasting in the headphones of the beast. 

But when the Devil’s at the end of a long day being…well, evil, he probably wants to chill out before hitting the sack.  And when he does, he might chill out to an album like Spoon’s new record Transference.  It’s a downshift from Slayer.  It’s fractured but it’s melodic.  It’s mildly dark and mysterious.  Tunes like “Who Makes Your Money” attack with echoed chanting and creepy synths until you drop what you’re doing and just listen.  “I Saw The Light” blasts jangly guitars into the momentum of a midnight instrumental section that’s probably the highlight of the whole fucking record.   

For all the shadows and brooding, though, Transference does jump on the offensive with a few straight-ahead rockers like “The Mystery Zone” and “Trouble Comes Running”.  Look, there are a lot of things going on with this record and there’s a lot you can say about Spoon as a band.  We’ll leave that sort of thing to that asshole Rob Sheffield.  I will say that one of the interesting things about this record is that the songs on it seem to be mostly about death and love – and it doesn’t sound like Spoon really differentiates between the two in any kind of logical way.

Transference as a record isn’t altogether a separate product from some of Spoon’s previous efforts, but it is a little different.  It’s a little better at putting you in that strange, meditative mood that isn’t exactly happy.  It sounds like the feeling you get when you’re confused about being melancholy.  Which is the frame of mind Satan might want to be in at 3 in the morning after a hard day’s work.