I really want to like "Written in Reverse," the first single off Spoon's new album, Transference:
But I'm having a hard time with it so far. Let me add a disclaimer first. I love Spoon. "The Way We Get By" is an almost perfect expression of the complex emotions of everyday living. "Anything You Want" makes my heart hurt, in part because I tend to think the promise in it is either insincere, or one that the narrator has no intention or ability to fulfill. Britt Daniel writes these wonderful, precise lyrics: I can't resist, for example, the geometry of "Tract houses / square couches / Short legs and / Square shoulders" in "Rhythm and Soul" off Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.
And, though this is rare for me, Spoon is one of the few bands where I can explain exactly what I like in their music, not just in the lyrics. The precise, jangly sound the band achieves on songs like "I Turn My Camera On," has a fabulous cadence to it, it's music for invigorating your walk down the street. The drumming isn't complicated, and neither is the guitar, but they provide really good bones for the song, so all the little staticky flourishes and triangle don't seem distracting. Is it any wonder Spoon's music, with all its mathematical rigor, worked so well as the score to Stranger Than Fiction (another one of my favorite and criminally slept-on movies of the decade). Take a look at this first scene, where the instrumentals to "The Way We Get By" narrate Will Ferrell's day:
Piano's the backbone here, but the effect is the same. I hesitate to say the song is jaunty because of the melancholy than runs through so much of Spoon's work, but I kind of think that's what the tone is. Man, where was I? Right. "Written in Reverse" sounds a lot muddier than a lot of Spoon's work, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I miss that clarity. And honestly, the lyrics are kind of mediocre. "I'm writing this to you in reverse / Somebody better call a hearse" sounds like "hearse" is chosen just because it rhymes with "reverse" and if not, it's a kind of creepy-sounding threat. "I've seen it in your eyes / I've seen you blankly stare / And I want to show you how I love you / But there's nothing there," is both metrically awkward and is a sentiment that's been done much, much better by, among other people, the Beatles. I realize that's a high bar to set, but it seems like a weirdly uninventive lyrical conceit. Oh well. Maybe the other stuff will be better.