¤ jetless heights

+ Thu, February 24

12. Spoon - I Summon You

Spoon is a band that I really get and really don’t get all at once.  They’re easily accessible, there’s nothing ethereal happening here.  At times the songs seem simple, nothing too outlandish.  Other times, those very same songs seem impossibly intricate and infinitely detailed.  This is weird and I’m still stricken by it years after first hearing them.  I think now that it’s the product of nothing less than genuine love of the craft and an honest and open pursuit of quality.

I cheat you tonight with a song that you simply can’t get yet.  Their fifth LP doesn’t even hit the streets till May 10 and I’m going to tease you with a song from it.  I suppose, though, that it’s not too unfair as I know this song originally from the demo teasing Britt Daniel did to me last summer.

How simple this song is!  On that demo, yes, it’s lone guitar and vocal, but the music, it’s so simple!  But god, listen to this song and tell me that it doesn’t completely pervade your brain.  One day in January my housemate had just come in.  He walked past my door as this song was playing and stopped midway up the stairs to come back and hear the rest of it.  A minute later he was in his room streaming it off me.  3 minutes and 55 seconds later he had his guitar out and was practicing it.  This was caused by 2 or 3 seconds of spontaneous exposure.

What is it about this song?  It’s not bouncy pop, indeed, the subject matter is rather heavy and loaded.  It’s not loaded with varying hooks and upstage production, hell, this is a rough demo with a pretty unvarying guitar part.  It’s not even particularly well recorded!  But yet there it stands, engaging as ever.

My take?  Champion songcraft.  Brilliant devotion to the process of making music.  A crystal clear idea from a sharp mind, brought to creation by educated hands and a sensitive ear.  Examine the flushed out album version and you’ll find more evidence.  That acoustic guitar stills sits there center stage with Britt’s throaty rasp, but the song finds itself with a little more kick from a persistent drum kit and with a little more aural pleasure from a quiet, airy guitar floating through the verses.

All that and Spoon do it with no apparent effort.  Believe me when I call this an instant Spoon classic.

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