Spoon “They Want My Soul”
In 1996 New York City was coming out of a rut and Austin, Texas was in its dawn. Musically, there was almost no local Indie Rock to speak of in The Big Apple. In those days just before the internet as we know it, I searched zines for any mention of post-Pixies or Pavement-ish bands to chase down. Details were scant and relatively hard to come by, but signs pointed towards Chicago and Austin. It was February and freezing in Chicago. Austin was warmer and cheaper and was unknown country to me. And while I knew nothing of Outlaw Country or The Longhorns or breakfast tacos, the decision was not difficult. I booked a flight to Texas.
Bygone Austin has been romanticized to almost mythic proportions by “Dazed and Confused” and by pioneering SXSW attendees. But -- I must say -- many of those myths are based in truth. The city was slow. Everybody seemed happier and better looking than where you came from. And they all seemed to know each other. People either had zero jobs or five jobs. Entire houses rented for less than half of the shittiest Manhattan studios. Breakfast tacos were under two bucks. And open mic bands sounded better than any band I’d heard in New York that year.
During my short, delirious stay in Austin in 1996, I saw two bands play whom I’d read about in fanzines. Both bands had tall, lanky, charming lead singers who seemed prone to bedhead. One was all hushed and gentle, full of soft edges. The other was taut and loud, full of acute angles. The former was the American Analog Set. The other band was Spoon. That Spring, Spoon would release “Telefono,” an album that I would play after the sun went down, when the action started. Later that year, AmAnSet would release “The Fun of Watching Fireworks,” an album that I would play almost exclusively at sunset and sunrise. Over the next few years, they would become two of my absolute favorite bands.
In the summer of 1996, I took a job as an executive assistant at Elektra Records, the home to some of my most treasured albums. “Marquee Moon,” “Funhouse” and “Forever Changes” were all released by Elektra. When I arrived, however, the label, and the industry as a whole, had shifted. Elektra in 1996 was the sum of several merged, acquired and licensed labels. It could boast Bjork and Luna, but AC/DC and Metallica were paying the bills. Within a year, the label would be reclaimed by the success of Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes and, eventually, Third Eye Blind.
While at Elektra, I developed a very minor, and somewhat inaccurate, reputation as the young kid who listened to all the Indie Rock stuff. It is true that I would work overtime to pay for my Other Music habit and that I would go see shows four or five nights a week. But, in truth, Indie Rock was not an especially commercial concern in 1996 and, frankly, there were hundreds of more devout and knowledgeable versions of me stalking seven inches at Kim’s and ticket sales at Brownies. It’s just that I was the only one working at Elektra.
As a result of this reputation, I would occasionally get free lunches from the A&R executives, looking to stay close to the scent of anything new and exciting. One day, one of the senior executives from Los Angeles invited me to lunch and asked me to listen to a CD of a band he had just signed. It was an expensive midtown lunch. He was a great looking and convincing guy. He clearly loved music. Over our meal, we excitedly talked about what was happening at Touch & Go and at Kill Rock Stars. In an era wherein Indie credibility was always on the line and “selling out” was an unthinkable sin, he made me feel like none of that mattered. All that mattered, to him, was the music. He wanted more people to hear great music. As lunch ended, he handed me that CD he wanted me to check out. The executive’s name was Ron Lafitte and the CD was an early version of “A Series of Sneaks” by Spoon.
I was confused and, honestly, a little ashamed. What did Elektra Records want to do with Spoon? Moreover, what did Spoon want to do with Elektra Records? At the time, I was working on a start-up on the side (and occasionally while at work). As a result, I already felt like I was holding a secret from the company. But this news -- that Elektra had signed Spoon -- made me feel like a double agent. Should I protect my semi-precious band, who struggled to fill a small room in New York when they came to town? Should I tell them to run? Or should I help work the system to their advantage? Was Ron Lafitte correct when he said that the time was right for Spoon -- that they could be the label’s next Pixies?
I mean, they did sound a lot like The Pixies. He made good points. But -- Spoon? They were the band Elektra chose? Didn’t the label know that Indie Rock was not a popular form? Moreover, that the form and its audience resisted popularity? I presumed that “Indie Rocker” was not a profession but something that too smart and too musically talented people did when they were not in grad school. In 1996, there was literally no evidence that you could have a career as an “Indie Rocker.”
It turned out, I was right. At least temporarily. “Series of Sneaks,” an album constructed out of sharp angles cut from early Wire but pasted into Austin, Texas, was a commercial fiasco. At Elektra, it was dead on arrival. I remember hearing about it in meeting after meeting. First there was the debate about whether “Car Radio” would have an extra verse added so that it could be used as a single. Then there was the question as to whether the album even had a single. Or whether it needed one. Eventually, the people in those meetings appeared less wide-eyed. Finally, nobody wanted to talk about Spoon. They realized what I already knew. Indie Rock didn’t sell. Spoon wouldn’t sell. It was 1996.
I left Elektra in 1998, the day my start-up could pay me half of what I made as an assistant. By then, “A Series of Sneaks” had come and gone. Back in Austin, the American Analog Set had released an even softer, prettier follow up to their debut. Like with “A Series of Sneaks,” several thousand people heard the album. Unlike with Spoon, this was considered a minor triumph. The album was positively reviewed in small publications around the country. The band toured outside of Texas. It outsold their debut. Each member likely pocketed some extra cash from the whole endeavor, covering Austin rents for half the year or maybe going to help pay off some student loans. The life of The American Analog Set was the life of so many indie bands. It’s what likely would and should have been the life of Britt Daniel and Spoon.
After the Elektra debacle, however, Britt Daniel & Jim Eno gathered themselves. They exorcised the demon with an infamous seven inch dedicated to their former A&R guy and soon signed to Merge Records. They re-read the rules of the game and played by them. Britt worked odd jobs around albums and tours. Jim worked in tech and engineering. They were professional musicians in a band that was widely considered great. But that didn’t pay the bills. It couldn’t -- especially not around the end of the century, when album sales were racing to the bottom and music was increasingly considered a free good.
Meanwhile, while almost nobody was looking, three extraordinary things started to happen: First, Spoon was getting (much) better as a band. They had pulled off an almost unparalleled streak of greatness. Each of their first five albums (though some argue about their debut) were considered extraordinary achievements and none were considered blemishes. This streak continues to this day, but, even then, it put them in rarified air. Every great band has their regression. Their “mulligan.” But not Spoon. Second, Indie Rock was crossing over. It started sometime around 2004, when Modest Mouse’s “Float On” was played on TV and then on the radio. Modern Rock, a relatively new radio format, was increasingly open to music that was both “modern” and “rocking.” In a blink of the Third Eye Blind, Indie Rock started to get popular. And, finally, the ascension of MySpace, Pitchfork and other, now-forgotten, web platforms, enabled bands to promote themselves globally with exponentially more leverage and less friction than just a few years earlier. By 2005, Spoon were older and wiser. Like all great artists, they experimented and evolved. But it was not that Britt Daniel changed so much as a writer or that the band had changed drastically in their sound. It was that everything around them had changed. And, theoretically, to Spoon’s favor.
“Gimme Fiction” in 2005, would be the album where it first became clear that everything was different for Spoon. It was, to date, their most varied and ambitious record and it featured a bonafide and unexpected hit single. “I Turn My Camera On” made the top forty charts, propelling the album in a similar direction. The song was licensed for TV and film. It’s a delicious and uncharacteristic song from Spoon. Britt sings most of it in falsetto. There are fewer angles. It moves your foot a lot and your ass a bit. And yet, as great as the song is, the album is even better. With “Gimme Fiction,” Britt Daniel and Jim Eno could do something that, in 1996, would seem impossible. They could quit their day jobs. They could be professional indie rockers.
Britt and Jim were not alone. Around this time, touring and music licensing allowed the upper echelon of indie artists to thrive. The White Stripes, Interpol and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were previously considered exceptions that snuck in after the wake of The Strokes. By 2005, though, Death Cab for Cutie joined the club. Soon The National and LCD Soundsystem would join, as well. Each of these bands could sell hundreds of thousands of copies of their albums around the world. They could sell out large rooms and small arenas in major cities around the world. Though sonically divergent, they were aligned in that they were full time, professional, indie musicians. To varying degrees, the singers from these bands became thought of not as “Indie Rockers” of “Indie Rock Stars,” but, simply, as “Rock Stars.”
What separated Spoon from their cohort was that they kept moving forward, as though relatively little had changed. Every couple of years, they would release a near perfect album. Each one showed progress. Each one adding new ideas to an already formed palette. Two steps forward. Zero steps back. Britt got better as a songwriter and Jim got better at everything else. It was beyond anything they could have imagined in Austin, in 1996. But it was a lot of work. The rewards were greater as the costs were higher. Along the way, Spoon hit middle age. Jim Eno built a renowned studio in Austin. Like most of his fellow “Indie Rock Stars,” he married and had children. Matt Berringer from The National did it. Heck -- even James Murphy did. Britt Daniel, meanwhile, moved around, from Austin to New York to Portland and, eventually, to Los Angeles -- the city where Ron Lafitte came from. Britt dated but never married. He birthed songs. Great songs. Songs for millions. Millions who adored him and expected everything. It was likely not the destination he imagined. It was likely not a deal he knowingly signed. But it was the deal he was given. By 2014, Britt Daniel was both an artist and a star. And he was most obviously not comfortable with the latter.
Though he strikes a formidable pose on stage and in photos, Britt Daniel is an unlikely, and grudging celebrity. As the stages got bigger, so did the magnifying glass. Whatever deal Spoon signed with Merge around 2000, it certainly did not contemplate superstardom, Spotify, Instagram and TikTok. Similarly, whatever deal Britt Daniel made with his soul in 1997, when he signed with Elektra Records, it is unthinkable that he knew whether fame would suit him. Celebrity was simply not an Indie Rock outcome back then. But, it turned out that by 2011, and against all odds, Britt Daniel was in a full blown relationship with stardom. And Britt wanted to break up. You could see it on his face. You could hear it in interviews. The creative tank may not have been empty. But the tank of joy seemed close.
The “me time” came for Britt in the form of Divine Fits, a collaboration with Dan Boeckner, of Handsome Furs and Wolf Parade. Equal parts Joe Strummer, Bruce Springsteen and something thin and French-Canadian, Boeckner looks like a star and sounds like a star. But he is most decidedly not a celebrity. With Divine Fits, Britt could lean on a collaborator who was great behind the mic and still had a well of inspiration that was artful, utopian and, most importantly, untainted. The band made an album without expectations. They toured for fun. They covered Bruce Springsteen. It was hard work, but it didn’t seem like it for Britt Daniel. It seemed like fun. It seemed like the antidote to Indie Rock celebrity. It seemed like exactly what he needed.
It may have been close. But, it was evidently not enough. The evidence to the contrary is Spoon’s 2014 release, “The Want My Soul.” Almost five years removed from “Transference,” “They Want My Soul” is the band’s eighth album. It is also their eighth consecutive “great album.” By this point, there was no active band that could reasonably make claim to such a mistake-free run. It is an album born from tight focus in writing and playing. By now, Britt Daniel knows all the angles and they are always acute. His vocals are typically sharp and hoarse with the occasional glimpse of that falsetto that he pulled out in 2005. The plugged in acoustic guitar is frequently in the center of things. But, the synthesizers are critical for both contrast on the ballads and atmosphere to create relief from the puncture wounds. On “They Want My Soul” the songs are so good and so familiar as to sound almost effortless. But, that is more a tribute to the writer and the band than to the considerable work involved. By this time, Spoon was a five piece, and the extra guitarist evidently freed Daniel up to focus on writing, arranging and singing. And, while Daniel’s voice and writing are front and center, Jim Eno’s sneaky rhythms and Dave Fridmann and Joe Chiccarelli’s textures are the X factors this time out.
A quarter century into my relationship with Spoon, I do not really know Britt Daniel. Through my work, I’ve had occasion to speak with him. I even have friends who know him a bit. But, to me, he is still mostly a stranger. And with fame, he’s appeared more, and rightfully, guarded. So, while I have a sense for the gestalt of “They Want My Soul,” my perspective is also largely projection. That projection of mine, however, is of a man who is reflecting back on the contracts of his life -- with friends, with women, with music and with celebrity -- and is increasingly unsure about the cost columns. Sure, he has gotten a lot. More than he could have imagined. But he never wanted everything and he doesn’t need everything. But, he is made to feel that the cost of his gifts is nothing short of everything. He can refuse the gifts. He can return them. He can ignore them. It doesn’t seem to matter. They want his music. They want his time. They want to know him. They want to love him. They want to buy him. They want to sell him. They want his soul.
Nearly every song on “They Want My Soul” is about the cost of loving something or someone. It starts out with small stakes. On “Rent I Pay,” Britt is just losing sleep and some recording tapes while a fidgety, inverted guitar riff and a splat of drums gets more insistent. It’s the album’s first single, so it stays necessarily brief and simple. But, as the layers build, those sharp guitar angles begin to sound like glass crunching beneath. Next up is “Inside Out,” a dreamy and wistful piano ballad with synth-y wind chimes and a slinky beat. Here, Britt keeps his gaze close and asks his unnamed love to do the same. It’s not the outside that matters. It’s not the adoration. He may briefly feel like the sun but he does not want fans to revolve around him nor does he want external motivation. He wants to be her satellite. And, quite literally, he tells us: “We got nothing else to give.”
Throughout the album, the expenses pile up. On “Rainy Taxi,” the singer has no “good news,” “nothing else” and “nowhere else.” He warns his love that if she is going to leave, to never come back. Out of necessity, he will close the door and forget her. You don’t buy his threat for a moment, but you certainly believe that this is a man who can’t afford to give more of himself. Although it’s not stated in the song, the liner notes suggest that “Rainy Taxi” is also about missing Portland, the city Britt left for Los Angeles. “New York Kiss,” has more Pop groove and delicacy than “Rainy Taxi.” It was co-written with former Semisonic lead and ace songwriter, Dan Wilson. On “Rainy Taxi,” Britt is at the moment of separation. On “New York Kiss,” he is looking back at the separation from a greater distance. On both songs, he loses more than the love. He loses himself. He loses his home. For him, New York is now just the scene of the kiss and the moment of fracture. She took the city from him.
Aside from “I Just Don’t Understand,” an unnecessary cover of an old Ann Margaret song (later covered by The Beatles and many others), there is not a misstep on “They Want My Soul.” And, even that selection -- as opposed to, say, a Wire song, or Clash song or Motown song -- feels deeply personal for Britt, in its own way. Every song written by Britt Daniel, however, looks inside to consider what his relationships (including with himself) are costing him. It is never especially bitter or spiteful. It does not read as a litany of celebrity complaints. No. It sounds like Soul music played by a writer whose vernacular was once mostly Rock music -- Punk, Indie and Classic -- but who has grown over time. The beats are not slippery or fat like a DFA beat. They are not designed to get you to dance but they are very specifically designed to move you. And the layers of vocals and atmosphere provide beds and clouds around the angles of the singers voice. The result is very much a Soul record. Just a Soul record that sounds like Spoon.
On the howling title track, Britt may focus his ire on televangelists, swindlers and bullies, but he is probably just being polite. He was forty-three when he made that song. The album it is on was widely and immediately hailed critically and coronated publicly. In 2014, he had legions of fans. He had a rare profession and an even rarer career. He had four bandmates and one long-standing partner. I presume he had dear friends and confidants. But the loneliness of feeling that everyone wants something from you all the time -- real or imagined -- is profoundly sad. It’s likely more true than not. And I bet it’s also exhausting and alienating. I wouldn’t know because I am not a celebrity. But when listening to “They Want My Soul,” an album that I marvel at, it is hard to not think of Britt Daniel the college radio DJ in 1993. Or Britt Daniel opening for other bands at Hole in The Wall in 1995. Or Britt Daniel who was dropped by his record label. Or Britt Daniel who, by 2021, had made nine triumphant albums with Spoon. That Britt Daniel has given a lot. More than we could have ever imagined. And more than enough.