After going more than four years without releasing a studio album, Spoon returned as something of a new band, at least where their lineup is concerned. The band had spent most of their two-decade history as a four-piece, but for their new album They Want My Soul they added a fifth member in Alex Fischel, who is making his impact especially felt in their live shows, according to bassist Rob Pope. In addition to keyboards, Fischel plays guitar on many songs, freeing the band’s singer/guitarist Britt Daniel to focus more on singing and entertaining the audience.
“That’s been the biggest live switch-up,” Pope said. “That’s been really fun because there are parts in old songs that were never there before that we didn’t have enough hands on stage to do. Now we can.”
Fischel’s arrival in Spoon is a direct result of the hiatus the group took after they finished touring behind their 2010 album Transference.
Soon after putting Spoon on hold, Daniel teamed up with Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade to form a side band, Divine Fits. That group released a critically acclaimed album, A Thing Called Divine Fits, in 2012. The keyboardist in Divine Fits was Fischel, and Daniel was so impressed with Fischel’s contributions, he recruited him to join Spoon when the group reconvened earlier this year.
Daniel wasn’t the only member of Spoon who didn’t exactly disappear during what turned out to be nearly a three-year hiatus.
Drummer Jim Eno turned his attention to what was already a burgeoning producing career and helmed several recording projects, including the 2013 !!! album Thri!!!er, Har Mar Superstar’s 2013 release Bye Bye 17 and the Heartless Bastards’ 2012 album Arrow. Meanwhile keyboardist/guitarist Eric Harvey made a solo album, 2012’s Lake Disappointment.
As for Pope, his break started by getting right back on the recording/touring cycle when he reunited with his first band, The Get Up Kids, to make the 2011 album, There Are Rules.
“We toured pretty much that whole year,” Pope said. “And I’m not going to lie. Toward the end of that, after all of the Spoon stuff that had been going on since I joined the band in 2006, all of the touring and recording and all of that stuff, and then a year of touring with The Get Up Kids when I knew all of those Spoon guys were taking a break, I was pretty burned out after that. I was ready to not be on the road for a little while.”
Over the next two years, Pope partnered with some other friends from bands to open a bar in Brooklyn called Lake Street, got married and just recently had his first child. By the end of 2013, though, Spoon was once again calling and the band started writing and squaring plans to record the new album.
Initially, the band planned to record the entire album with Joe Chiccarelli (The Strokes, Jason Mraz, My Morning Jacket) then to have Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips) mix the record. But that plan didn’t hold.
“We had about half of the songs done, and we started mixing with Dave, and we got along with Dave so well,” Pope says. “Dave asked us about tracking with him, and we couldn’t pass that up. We kind of parted ways with Joe, not on bad terms whatsoever, but just we wanted to keep moving with the record. So we decided to track the last half with Dave, which was a blast.”
The music that emerged on They Want My Soul is frequently edgier and often a bit more aggressive than Spoon’s previous seven albums. Big drumbeats introduce the opening track, “Rent I Pay,” a swaggering, hard-hitting tune. “Rainy Taxi” is a sneaky rocker, whose intensity grows as the song unfolds. The hook-filled “Do You” and the chunky title track also add grit to the album. Meanwhile, more textured tunes like the electronic-leaning “Inside Out” and the space age-sounding “Outlier” balance out the album nicely.
This was exactly the kind of album the band had in mind, Pope said.
“The last record, it was a cool record,” he said of Transference, “but it was more of like a sit-in-the-corner-with-headphones record. And we were looking for something you could turn up on your car stereo this time around.”
Spoon headline the Riverside Theater Wednesday, Sept. 17 at 8 p.m. with opener EMA.
