Spoon, Oct. 19, Electric Factory

The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.

options

Spoon, Oct. 19, Electric Factory

POSTED: Sunday, October 21, 2007, 11:47 AM

Filed Under: Music Show

Photo | Char Vandermeer

Bet you got it all planned right. Bet you never worry.

The standard take on Spoon casts them as a band always almost ready to break out. They’ve ridden a steady slow upswing in buzz over the last few years and their last few albums; they own a handful of hooks instantly recognizable from soundtracks and commercials; they write songs with meticulous arrangements and release increasingly spare slow-burning records. It’s easy enough to make the leap to metaphor as they’re touted over and over as the next dues-paid breakout on the strength of a catalogue of restless songs that reach for release but build carefully to frustration and paranoia.

This always-almost status puts them at the top of festival bills, and put them in front of the Electric Factory Friday night, doing the difficult work of translating a series of scrupulous studio songs into a four-man show in a concrete hangar. Sans opener — the scheduled Ponies really tried to make it, they explained — they ran through two dozen songs in a long set and a pair of encores in front of a very full yuppie-indie house. Clearly, this is a band that values their live show as much as their impeccably-produced records: Jim Eno’s drums conquered the echo of the space, and retained much of their studio crispness, the lighting synched carefully with the songs (one production value almost never done right in rock and roll), the couple of missteps (a jumped drum fill toward the end of the set) were quickly noted and passed over by the band.

The midset pairing of Gimme Fiction’s “My Mathematical Mind” and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga’s “The Ghost of You Lingers” brought this thoroughness into relief: They moved from one of their most-tightly coiled pieces to a track greeted, when it leaked, with dismay over its formlessness. Both songs moved perfectly, close to the album versions — as they should, because there are no unearned crescendoes or abrupt transitions in their sound. Neither had the abandon of a performance by a road-warrior band like the Hold Steady or the Drive-By Truckers, bands able to put the performance and the moment over the song. Instead, the performance became like nothing so much as watching Roger Federer play tennis — there’s effort and engagement, but there’s also the sense that even in the moment, they’ve got one eye on perfection.

Posted by justin bauer @ 11:47 AM Permalink | Post a comment

Previous Story: Jay Reatard, Oct. 12, First Unitarian Church

Next Story: Saves the Day, Oct. 16, North Star

Comments (0)

Q&A with SHARI SOLANIS: "The goal isn't pornography"
SEXY TIME Q&A: I've never had an orgasm during sex with a man — and I'm 30!
NOW SEE THIS: Transit cop arrests marijuana activist for alleged disorderly conduct.
What we're trying to do this weekend
CONCERT REVIEW: Primus (3D & quadraphonic sound) @ The Tower 10/17
Q&A with Tony Goldwyn: "Life is gray, and relationships are, too"
ICEPACK ILLUSTRATED: Indian fare rules, Dunder Mifflin lives on, Tom Jones is a god
Bradley Cooper promises he's not an asshole
Q&A with Goon’s Seann William Scott
ICEPACK ILLUSTRATED: The Archbishop meets the Geator, the Mayor goes suit shopping, Le Bec Fin fin.

About this blog

Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

Follow Critical Mass editors Patrick Rapa and Emily Guendelsberger on Twitter:

@mission2denmark | @emilygee

Search this blog:

Topics:

Blog archives:

May
April
March

February
January

Past Archives: