Even with the benefit of perspective-lending distance, that run put together by Spoon from '01 to '07 - Girls Can Tell, Kill the Moonlight, Gimme Fiction, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga - was straight-up great, and there's not a lot more to be said about that. The next one was Transference, a step in a different and (deliberately) shakier direction, and it didn't sink in in the same way and besides came out back in 2010, so however you reckon it: Spoon, it's been too long.
Which makes They Want My Soul all the more welcome, because it is excellent. There's not another band, I don't think, with Spoon's ability to surprise me into a smile at their musical moves (the New Pornographers, maybe?), and on this record, they've still got it - the rhythm and soul and sonic attitude (Britt Daniel's Adam's apple strut so easy to visualise) that's marked their output since they hit their stride back more than a decade ago, together with some well-judged filligree by way of the odd Cure-y keyboard wash (the glassy groove of "Inside Out"'s a highlight) and even, on "Outlier", sparkly Spanish guitar - though it's maybe the raggedly straight ahead surges of "Rainy Taxi", "Do You" and the title track that are its greatest pleasures. What up!
Which makes They Want My Soul all the more welcome, because it is excellent. There's not another band, I don't think, with Spoon's ability to surprise me into a smile at their musical moves (the New Pornographers, maybe?), and on this record, they've still got it - the rhythm and soul and sonic attitude (Britt Daniel's Adam's apple strut so easy to visualise) that's marked their output since they hit their stride back more than a decade ago, together with some well-judged filligree by way of the odd Cure-y keyboard wash (the glassy groove of "Inside Out"'s a highlight) and even, on "Outlier", sparkly Spanish guitar - though it's maybe the raggedly straight ahead surges of "Rainy Taxi", "Do You" and the title track that are its greatest pleasures. What up!
