Saturday, December 04, 2010

Sweeping The Nation Albums Of 2010: Number 39



Metacritic's official best reviewed band of the 2000s became a little more rattled, and rattly, this time around. It still sounds very much like a Spoon album - clipped, economical songs that pivot around a floruished garage-pop tipping their hat to soul and increasingly a psycho-ambient layer or two, Britt Daniel's voice heavy with both possibilities and fears. Their persistent search for the groove in the midst of the stomp might mean they get stuck in one passage occasionally, but you'll always find it broadening out to more nuanced corners where an unexpected chord change, a passage of higher intensity or swaggering, snarling bonsai solo might be lurking ready to push the production forward into the sort of zones most bands with their instrumental arrangement can only dream of. They're a great studio band, willing to always push forward the little sounds that make the difference, but come out the other end as a tremendous rhythmically aware live band as such. It's about writing rigidly swinging songs of their own stripe and hue, then stretching them out to tease out the most interesting bits.

[Spotify]

Written In Reverse


The full list

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