Spoon Get Gritty and Riff Out Some Rad Tunes on New Album Lucifer On The Sofa
4.5 out of 5 stars
If you are looking for rocking guitar riffs that rattle and hum like a local bar band but blast through to a higher level of cohesive creativity, then I highly recommend you listen to Spoon’s new album Lucifer On The Sofa.
If that opening sentence doesn’t make sense to you right now, it will after you listen to the first two songs on the album.
“Held” and “The Hardest Cut” have some guitar riffs that will cut right through to your brain. It’s highly reminiscent of The Black Keys or even a band like Clutch or Toadies.
It’s been a long time since I actually played through a Spoon album, so I can’t honestly say how this compares to some of their other albums, but what I can say is that based on this album being as good as it is, I am going to be going back through their catalog to get refreshed on their music again.
I remember some of the singles they put out like “Don’t You Evah” and “The Way We Get By” but I am not sure that their past albums are in the same vein as those songs or not. However, this album seems a lot more mature in its riffs and composition trading simple melodies for a bit more complicated rock structures.
I think one of the most similar songs to their old stuff might be “The Devil & Mr. Jones” which has a repeating chord progression that harkens some of the popular songs of the past.
The hilarious thing about Spoon is that even though I know they are from Austin, lead singer Britt Daniel’s voice (and possibly name) always make me thing he is from the U.K. He sounds so similar to a Gallagher brother from Oasis or any other handful of English acts. It’s not an outright accent or anything, but it’s just a subtle nuance of his voice, I think.
One of their singles “Wild” is definitely a radio-friendly song. It’s not my personal favorite on the album, but it has that catchy hook with an anthemic sound. Its sound can be attributed to the fact that Daniel worked with The Bleachers’ Jack Antonoff on the song.
Aside from the previously mentioned songs, I would say “Feels Alright” is quite a good song in that its staccato action really gives it a punchy sound that makes you want to nod your head along no matter what you are doing at the moment.
I will say while “On the Radio” is probably one of the weakest songs on the album for lyrical quality or subject matter, it’s still quite poppy, and I bet when played live people will still start singing the chorus before the end of the song. So, it’s going to be quite interactive there.
No modern rock release is complete without appealing to some sort of Beatles-esque style sound (as they seemingly played every style of rock you can think of), and the most “Beatles sounding” song on this Spoon album is “Astral Jacket.” It’s a spacey tune that questions mortality and divinity…or at least understands the delicacy of each.
To be honest, if this song had 10 songs that were more like the first 5 songs, it would probably score a 4.8 or 4.9 on the star rating for me. I just think a couple of the slower tunes are not quite as fun to listen to as the first few songs. They are still good songs. It’s just a different sound, and I am not sure this album benefits from them when it starts out so good.
I think “Held” and “The Hardest Cut” are my favorite songs on the album, and they just have such a cool sound to them that it would be hard pressed to find many rock songs better than them this year.