Spoon - Lucifer on the Sofa

no hot thoughts tracks and a rock oriented setlist sounds pretty great to me

nice!

I find the album less interesting than Hot Thoughts but still a blast.

I sometimes forget Hot Thoughts even exists. It's by far my least favourite of theirs but I remain a big fan and will definitely be buying this new one.

Hot Thoughts ruled but just suffered in comparison to their best album THEY WANT MY SOUL xoxo

Hot Thoughts bangs

Hot Thoughts is top 3. They Want My Soul is no. 1.

They Want My Soul is probably my number one too, they even ended the show with "Rent I Pay" which was perfect. i also love Hot Thoughts and was very surprised they didn't play even one song from it. the biggest surprise from the show was "Lines in the Suit" and "The Fitted Shirt" and i heard they brought those out after years of not playing them live. "Got Nuffin" was probably the best live song on this night.

starting an album with a cover is kind of a baller move

I get "NY Kiss" stuck in my head monthly.

Sometimes "WhisperI'lllistentohearit" is my favorite Spoon. I dig Britt Daniel when he's being a creepy sexy dick.

on first listen, this feels like the last few spoon albums - a bunch of pretty good songs that all mush together with nothing in particular standing out as a highlight. the hardest cut comes the closest and that's just because of the BWAAAR BWAAAR BWAAAR BWAAAR part

I mean that's how I'd describe Girls Can Tell personally, and everyone loves that one. Not that it's bad at all.

Heh, that's me and KTM. I thought THAT was the consensus favorite.

I appreciate them extracting an unlikely Hound Dog Taylor riff from the Smog tune but the rock and roll vocal interjections are silly and sound almost hilariously out of place

I need to hear the rest. I still really like the first two singles.

they're one of those bands where there isn't really a consensus favorite/canonical "best" album. i think it's mostly about when you discovered them. like i'm a telephono/series of sneaks guy (though i also love gimme fiction)

Yeah, Gax5 was my first and I've never really warmed to the previous albums, despite some great tracks.

The run from Girls Can Tell to Transference is unassailable and I’m surprised to hear folks say their favorites fall outside of that string of albums (personally I find it neck and neck between KtM and Ga5)

I’m with ledge

i was appalled by girls can tell at the time, it was so wimpy and boring and uptight in comparison to what i thought spoon was. i still have trouble listening to it despite eventually adjusting to their shift in style.

Ha, yeah your theory on point-of-entry is probably OTM. Their imperial classic run imho is Sneaks thru Fiction, and showed such a big progression & was such an exciting journey to take with them that I ended up getting off-board after Transference bc it seemed like they had stopped evolving & didnt have any surprises left to offer. That being said I think the singles have convinced me to check this new one out. It's been long enough that I dont mind being "bored" by what I'm sure will be, at-worst, a solid album.

Side 2 / the last 5 songs on this new one are wonderful. They hit a slightly mysterious and melancholy tone that I love about them.

Was just coming here to post that very thing. Backloaded record, for sure. Five songs in, I was missing the sonic adventurousness of the previous few albums and was ready to declare it the Least Necessary Spoon album. But the last half is top shelf and redeems the whole thing.

I jumped on board with GF after digging the early singles, thought Ga4 my least favorite and still is despite containing my favorite ballad. I didn't listen to GCT until 2010 or so and its toughness blew me away; if someone never listened to them again, it works as an ideal distillation of their sound, obsessions, etc. For a band written up as so damn consistent they do provoke a lot of dissent.

this is just another solid spoon album and that's fine

Spoon is like one of those baseball players that never gets close to winning an MVP, but they consistently deliver one season after another until one day, you notice they've shot past big career milestones - like their 3000th hit - with a good bit left in the tank. They may be the best rock band of the past 20 years for a high level of consistency alone.

i let my Spotify laps so i currently don't have access to listen to this, wait there still is YouTube

Nice chat between Britt and Billy Gibbons on yesterday's Talkhouse pod.

i let my Spotify laps so i currently don't have access to listen to this, wait there still is YouTube

― Bee OK, Friday, February 11, 2022 9:01 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

you could always (gasp) buy the record

lol

was thinking the Tom Petty covers they did in lockdown make total sense when listening to something like Devil & Mr Jones on this one.

as ever the mastering/mixing/engineering of this is perfect, the vinyl sounds wonderful

Argh what 90s/00s alt pop hit uses the same chord progression as “The Devil & Mr Jones”?? It’s driving me crazy. (Also really not into this song!)

I think it’s Weezer, “Island in the Sun”

Yeah, it’s conquering me.

Gonna have to give this one a few more spins, but at first blush although every track sounds great while it’s on, there isn’t much here that’s hooking me. Then again, I had the same experience with Transference, which then became one of my favourites.

Alfred, this is great stuff:

Their preppy sternness and the intermittent submission to supervised anarchy—so much depends on the erotic allure of Daniel’s six-string squalls, manipulated with the ease of a casanova who has calculated the impact of a messy kiss.

aw, thanks

you could always (gasp) buy the record

I went to their show just this week and it wasn't cheap as pre covid tickets were. Plus I don't buy CD's anymore

Where is that Alfred quote from?

Bee OK, it's from this review: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/spoon-lucifer-on-the-sofa/

Thx

Gonna have to give this one a few more spins, but at first blush although every track sounds great while it’s on, there isn’t much here that’s hooking me.

I dunno, I listened to "On The Radio" twice a few days ago and it's been in my head ever since. I agree the melodies aren't as strong on some others, but I also think those might be my favorite songs on the record ("Astral Jacket," title track)

On The Radio jacks the riff from ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man”, so of course it’s catchy! :P

xxxxxp I mentioned this last fall (and will probably try this again with Spoon) but most of the GA shows here in NYC don't seem to be selling out, especially when they're in bigger venues. I think a lot of this has to do with concerns over COVID, first Delta and now Omicron. So with every GA show I've been to, I've been able to get GA tickets for half of the ticket price (i.e. less than half of the total price when you factor in the original ticket fees) usually two or three days in advance on the secondhand market. The downside is I'm never close to the stage, no way I'm packing myself into the crowd, but it's made for some very cheap shows - I went to see Bob Mould for $15. Spoon is $50 before fees here in NYC, so I'll probably go if it drops to $25.

This band has amassed one heck of a body of work that's remarkably consistent without necessarily being repetitive.

This is a great record. Wild and My Babe are knocking me out.

They churn out golden tunes out with so much ease. MY BABE

after repeated listenings, finding this album tiring and annoying
too much rockin for me i guess

"my babe" and the astral song are pretty good though

Maybe you're not rockin enough, have you considered that? Or maybe you're rockin too much - in a rocking chair!

not much of a surprise but this album is incredibly well-recorded

"Held" sounds to me like a very good band in a room joyfully playing music together...

don’t know the original, don’t care for callahan but the juxtaposition between the big bluesy riff and the lyric about letting oneself be held for the first time is fantastic

Agree with Ponzi that Held is the only Spoon doing I've actively disliked (whereas a few others just leave little impression). The worst song of their career for sure.

As for Lucifer on the Moon, I'm not enjoying it like I'd expected to. I love Spoon and Adrian Sherwood in almost equal amounts, but there's not much that's transcendent here. If I wasn't familiar with the original albums I would find the choices about the "kept" vocals and guitar parts quite baffling. These don't really feel like proper dub workouts to me. Somehow it remains more rock than dub.

I’ve disliked a few Spoon songs in the past — finally coming around to The Fitted Shirt, even, which I never got the love for.

I just listened to all their records in order on headphones, and I’m now firmly convinced that they’re the best rock band of the century. Their records are insanely well produced and arranged, but they never fail to really rock when it’s required. Like they _seem_ really cerebral in the way their songs are put together, but they rarely trip over their own brains; if it comes to conceptual whatever vs just givin’’er, they almost always err on the side of kicking out the jams.

I’m not mad on They Want My Soul or Lucifer. Both albums seem lacking a sense of aural space that feels essential to their appeal. But I _buy_ TWMS in a way that I don’t buy LOTS. Maybe it’s an allergy to classic rock tropes, and maybe it’s something I’ll overcome; I came around to Hot Thoughts after being initially cool toward it.

I do like Wild. One of my top songs of the year. But most of the rest of LOTS doesn’t ring my bells.

Listening to Lucifer on the Moon, though…. I think if they had released this as the album I’d think it was up there with their best — some trick of perception. Can see myself listening to this a lot more than the main album.

This new song Sugar Babies is pretty good. More interesting that anything on Lucifer on the Sofa.

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

I was wondering what you were talking about Nate and then found the song. Yes you're right, good.

ty, I should've done that really

This is great
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8vIyOnl6K8

Killer EP.