Lucifer on the Sofa By Spoon
Lucifer on the Sofa By Spoon
Some of the 21st century’s best rock ‘n’ roll bands elevate their subgenres toward transcendence: High on Fire’s variegated violence adds more heft to heavy metal; Drive-By Truckers’ detailed storytelling layers introspection into Southern rock; and Spoon’s oblique craftiness hones the hooks of pop rock.
Spoon gets more direct on its tenth album, Lucifer on the Sofa, than it has in years, returning to the band’s original hometown of Austin, Texas, dwelling within the city’s eager live-music scene and its stylistic mingling … and then dealing with the pandemic-related silencing of both scene and mingling.
There is a deliberately raw energy—particularly when compared to the most recent full-length predecessor, 2017’s Hot Thoughts—that suggests a band returning to foundational reasons for making music and also getting as close to onstage electricity as the studio environment permits.
Fortunately, and despite sporadic inclusions of studio chatter and warmup, Spoon frontman Britt Daniel is not like circa-1969 Paul McCartney prodding his bandmates toward old places they’re not keen to revisit, and primary producer Mark Rankin turns his expertise working with Queens of the Stone Age and Adele toward giving Spoon analog immediacy.
As a singer, Daniel still evokes John Lennon in how his grainy tone imparts meaning, whether he’s nestling inside Bill Callahan’s lyrics in the potent opening cover of Smog’s “Held” or drifting into orbit as a “Satellite” around someone he’s sure he loves more than anyone else can.
With longtime drummer Jim Eno and newer bassist Ben Trokan in the pocket as if born there, and with second guitarist Gerardo Larios and guitarist/keyboardist Alex Fischel painting in sprays and daubs, Spoon also evokes classic rock, although the latter-day Rolling Stones grooves of “The Devil & Mister Jones” and the ELO luster of “On the Radio” rely more on wry sensitivity than cribbed riffs and overstuffed production.
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The title track, a night stroll with breathy saxophone lighting the path like kaleidoscopically fizzling neon, finishes Lucifer on the Sofa with intelligent unease. Spoon has made transcendent pop rock to acknowledge that getting back home doesn’t mean home is the same place these days.
