Right now I know no other time, Right now I know no other poll - SPOON (ILM artist poll #67) --- Voting extended until Sunday July 26, 2015

finally caved and dove in. not sure if i'll finish in time to vote, but this is proving a nice way to raise my estimation of Sneaks.

only liked maybe half of it before, but it's a really nice midpoint between their early pixies kick and where they'd wind up on GCT.

Where my song choices come from:

Kill The Moonlight 6
Transference 5
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga 4
Other 4
Gimme Fiction 2
They Want My Soul 2
A Series Of Sneaks 1
Girls Can Tell 1

Not the order the albums are in.

Don't sleep on Waiting For The Kid To Come Out, kids.

Johnny Fever if it helps I will probably end up with 4+ from Sneaks on my first ballot -- that album is a total knockout & my appreciation for it only grows by the year (even as I remain uninterested in whatever preceded it)

"paper tiger." still best. ;__;

the drums sound so good in "the way we get by," everything sounds so good in "the beast and dragon adored"

I love Sneaks but I can't pull out individual tracks the way I can from later albums; it feels more of a piece to me, perhaps (although all their records do).

When I listen to Spoon I get a very strong sense of wanting to be in a band that rehearses in a big double garage in an Austin suburb, where they leave the big double garage door open because it's sunny and there's grass outside and you're just with your buddies and you've been in this band forever and you just do it because it's fun and simple and you like doing it, and all your songs are about the dayjobs you've had, and the local paper you used to read, and that guy from a few blocks away who had a ride-on lawnmower even though his yard was tiny, and the malt shop you go to (or take your kids to, as you get older). And I'm from Devon and have never been and will never go to Texas, and I've never wanted to be in a band, but Spoon make me want to be in a band, especially from KTM onwards through GGGGG (and a tiny little bit less since then). But that three album run is just perfect, and everything either side is so damn good too that it might as well be perfect.

And I think that's me trying to say the same as Dr C said about The Ramones 14 years ago.

I had the same problem with A Series of Sneaks, I ended up choosing the songs based on my iTunes playcount.

Voted!

Gimme Fiction (7)
Kill the Moonlight (6)
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (5)
Girls Can Tell (3)
A Series of Sneaks (3)
Transference (1)

tip: if you search for 'spoon shake it off' on youtube you will get a woman playing the taylor swift song on spoons

pretty surrpised how poorly Ga5 has held up. i feel like i'm still a teenager when i put on GCT, but Ga5 makes me feel like either it hasn't aged too well or i haven't.

Transference felt like a kind of cool disappointment at the time, really curious how that one's gonna hit now. half expecting to love it

At least 4 songs on ĢGGGG still sound amazing to me and were high on my ballot

same. but it's hanging above Telephono on the 2nd lowest rung in my albums list thus far (though TWMS will probably bump it up). back in a high school summer i'd have ranked it 2nd highest, beneath GCT, but now i find it just doesn't hold together too well. there's a very long stretch of boredom that sets in early, the production experiments feel low risk/reward, and aside from "the underdog" even the highlights remind me of things they'd done previously and better (well, okay, maybe not "cigarette case," which has the neat distinction of having just three lines of lyrics but demanding at least as many listens to realize it). imo everything about it sounds really 2007, too, whereas the three albums before it sound like great rock records from whenever.

maybe this isn't the thread for it, but i'm curious to hear some thoughts on their live show. i saw them in '07 in Philly, which i remember having been a set that disappointed all of the dozen or so people i knew who went. gave them another shot at radio city on the Transference tour, which was just incredible. the last time was opening for Arcade Fire in Philly again, and it was probably worse than the first go around. both of the off nights gave me the impression that they realized the crowd wasn't really with it early in the set and decided to just phone it in. kinda endearing

seen them live three times. each time they were solid. there was nothing crazy about their shows – but they're a tight band and play very well together. there's nothing mind blowing, but they were always good.

(they were headlining each time, btw)

also, submitted!

album representation below (Johnny Fever is going to think I'm a monster)

Transference 5
Kill The Moonlight 5
Gimme Fiction 4
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga 4
They Want My Soul 4
Girls Can Tell 3
A Series Of Sneaks 0
Telephono 0

i think i have a someone who is going to help me out with the images for the countdown part of this poll. they have no idea what they are getting themselves into. haha.

xp No, I'm clearly the weirdo monster here.

i don't know about that, the results have been all over the place. have no idea where this thing is actually going to go.

damn is TWMS dire. even duller than i remembered

it has grown on me but i was there with that album at first...

top to bottom,

GIRLS CAN TELL (5)
KILL THE MOONLIGHT (5)
GIMME FICTION (4)
TRANSFERENCE (7)
A SERIES OF SNEAKS (1)
GA GA GA GA GA (3)
THEY WANT MY SOUL (0)
TELEPHONO (0)

Transference comes in 4th despite its high yield 'cause most of its keepers fall pretty low on the list. if this were a 30-song ranking Sneaks would have tallied up most of the extra picks.

oh! and Sneaks beats Ga5 just 'cause it's way more consistent and curious. my three picks from Ga are nice, but taken with the rest of the album they can't offset all the competent snoozers.

anyway thank you Bee OK, i probably would've never revisited this band so thoroughly if it weren't for the prompt, and it was a lot of fun. summer's their best season, too.

Voted!

Albums in order of preference:

Kill the Moonlight (5)
Transference (4)
Gimme Fiction (4)
Girls Can Tell (3)
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (3)

with the rest of the votes split among Sneaks/TWMS/Soft Effects EP

Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga was my way in to Spoon, so it'll always have a special place for me, but I think Kill The Moonlight is my absolute favourite, and their masterpiece; it's their most minimal and experimental, and their poppiest at the same time.

Re: live, only saw them once, on the Transference tour, and it was exactly as I'd expected; tight and fun. Not mind-blowing or life-changing, but just a good show that I was very glad to go to.

Listening to all the albums in order (but on shuffle within each album), I'm surprised how I seem to like them better and better as time goes on. I always thought KTM was a highlight, but up to GGGGG at least, I think they hit me harder every time out. Also thought it would be really tough to narrow it down to 25 songs that I really love, but it doesn't look like that'll be an issue. I've never given them a good headphone listen before - always full albums on the stereo - & it strikes me that their records are extremely well sequenced, creating a mood and a flow that doesn't really translate to picking out singles too well. Maybe that's why they've never really broken big, I dunno. I've always thought of them as being consistently strong, but a lot of their catalogue, song for song, is pretty slight. I think their production just gets better and better, too. Aw, c'mon!

Well alright.

Don't forget about this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8SaT5evtuQ

Also, just voted here are the splits

Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga: 5
Girls Can Tell: 5
Transference: 4
Kill The Moonlight: 3
They Want My Soul: 3
Gimme Fiction: 3
A Series of Sneaks: 2

love take the 5th, such a perfect fake motown song

The extended coda to "I Saw the Light" is just bonkers.

in

Kill The Moonlight 5
A Series of Sneaks 4
Transference 4
Gimme Fiction 3
Girls Can Tell 3
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga 2
They Want My Soul 2
Telephono 1
Other 1

picking for this now, it's amazing how many times i'm grabbing 2-3 tracks in sequence

i just saw the first draft for the artwork, we are in for a treat!

Wrapping up my listening with my first airing in at least 5 years of A Series of Sneaks. It's getting me to thinking about its place in their narrative. Everybody knows the back story--Laffitte--and the fail and agony of, getting dropped from Elektra--but seriously, even if they had gotten the support, how successful would it have been in that Marcy Playground/Semisonic/Eve 6/Fastball/Nu Metal on the horizon 1998? On this listen, "Execution" feels to me like a Radio contender, although if had been plugged (no singles were issued at the time, aside from a "30 Gallon Tank" EP) programmers may have shied away from the subject matter (or not, '99 was when that shit really took hold).

anyway i can submit a ballot later this weekend? whats the actual actual actual date?

Voted tracks. we should call the rollout 'someone get popsicles'!

I was thinking about Johnny Fever's post above defending the early stuff, and it made me think about my own 'it's complicated' relationship with Wilco. I got into them when AM came out, and saw them right before Being There was released. It was an amazing show, right after Bennett had joined, and the band was completely on the edge-seriously it reminded me of seeing the Replacements. Then YHF happened and all of a sudden the bandwagon fills up, for a record that I thought was....ok. I still wince when I hear people say they didn't really do anything before Summerteeth.

Anyway, that's a long of way of saying...I am that asshole here on Spoon. Sorry Johnny Fever.

Gimme Fiction 5
Girls Can Tell 5
They Want My Soul 3
Transference 3
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga 2
Kill The Moonlight 2

lol

fwiw, AM and Being There are still my two most-played Wilco albums. YHF has a couple songs I love, many songs I have no feelings about at all, and one that I really really hate.

tele - 2
sneaks - 3
girls - 5
kill - 4
fiction - 3
ga - 2
transference - 4
soul - 1
other - 1

JF-yeah I busted out Being There recently and was blown away again.
Bonus snark: Wilco latecomers who love the experimental sound and then say Jesus etc. is their fave song on YHF.

Pretty ballsy for a band with (at the time) much less than legendary status:
"I'm listening to 'Mountain to Sound' / and the way it's panned is cool."

That might be a good thread: bands referring to their own back catalogue in their songs.

haha more evidence for my world-unto-self theory

Songs In Which The Artist "Name-Drops" Their Earlier Works

Boom, thanks, RS!

anyway i can submit a ballot later this weekend? whats the actual actual actual date?

i can't do the results thread until towards the end of next week so...

Voting has been extended through the weekend. so now you have until late Sunday Night July 26th.

poll deadlines and ILM want my soul