Spoon Headed Our Way

By Sarah Cobarrubias in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 19, 2010 4:40PM

Spoon are currently on tour supporting their newest album, Transference, and will be making a stop at Aragon Ballroom on April Fool’s Day. They’ll be bringing along openers Deerhunter, the quickly rising Atlanta-based garage-psych band that’s been doing a lot of its own headlining lately, as well as experimental pop trio Micachu & the Shapes.

Transference, released in January, is Spoon’s seventh album, and fans seem to either love it or hate it. After a lovably poppy hit like their last album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (2007), most were hungry for more of its catchy, candy-coated tracks like “Underdog.” But a long three years later, Spoon mixed things up with Transference, taking a subtle departure from their focused, polished sound, and produced something unexpectedly cruder, or as our very own Tankboy said back in February, “like an album recorded slapdash and on the sly.” The album’s closing track, “Nobody Gets Me But You,” nicely sums up the overall mood of the album: minimalist, experimental, almost impromptu, as though someone recorded himself in his bedroom poking around on a keyboard and singing lyrics of the top of his head.

At first impression, Transference may feel more like a debut than a seventh album. It seems to lack memorable melodies and general focus, but after further listening it becomes obvious that its lo-fi rawness is actually an intended theme. Focusing on experimenting with their sound rather than simply creating another hit album may have been their best move - the change isn’t dangerously drastic and, after the huge success of their last album, their fans’ expectations may have been too high to fulfill anyway. Being perhaps Spoon’s most personal album, their show this April Fool’s Day should be a pretty intimate experience, well worth dealing with the unsavory Aragon.

Spoon plays Thursday, April 1 at Aragon Ballroom, 1106 W Lawrence, 8 p.m., $27.50, All Ages