SPOON - unsorted lyrics from various albums
SPOON - ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS (ABRIDGED)
 
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Time Magazine (http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030908/xarts.html?CNN=yes)
Sept. 8, 2003
 
THESE GUYS JUST MIGHT BE YOUR NEW FAVORITE BAND
BY JOSH TYRANGIEL

Music being the most abstract of the popular arts, it is hard to know exactly why some bands succeed and others fail. This much we do know: Spoon was once a band teetering toward failure. It was the late '90s, and Spoon was playing competent post-punk in the tradition of Wire and the Pixies. And in the post-punk tradition, the group was widely ignored. After a two-month affiliation with a major label, Spoon had its contract revoked. The band was deemed not only hopelessly uncommercial but also hopelessly uninteresting. 

Lead singer-songwriter Britt Daniel had a degree in radio, TV and film from the University of Texas to fall back on, but as he says now, "What was I gonna do with that?" Instead of sending out résumés, he wrote two hysterically cathartic songs about Ron Laffitte, the A.-and-R. guy who signed and then abandoned Spoon—The Agony of Laffitte and Laffitte Don't Fail Me Now. Daniel kept on writing and shuffled the lineup a bit, and in one of those moments that make up for all the Limp Bizkits in the world, Spoon stumbled onto a sound of its own. Girls Can Tell, the 2001 reanimation of Spoon, was a brilliantly minimalist rock album about love (or the lack of it). It was hardened but not ironic, tense but not jagged, smart but not so smart that Daniel couldn't shout "Aw-right!" to get his point across. The songs were about small things—girlfriends, dads, girlfriends—but they contained a multitude of emotions, and the music was so melodic that listeners were reminded just how great rock could be. 

Word spread, and 2002's equally good Kill the Moonlight enlarged the cult. As with R.E.M. in the late '80s, one senses that Spoon could be not just a distinctive band but the rare distinctive band that is also popular. Daniel is sequestered at home in Austin, Texas, adhering to a strict writing regimen in order to get a new album, Captured to Be Cooked, out by spring 2004. "I try to get up early, have some cereal, have a run and then don't talk to anybody for eight hours," he says. "It's really hard." Daniel has written 40 songs, but thinks only four of them will make the album. "There's too much going on in a lot of them. My favorite songs are minimal—We Will Rock You, Back in Black, Kiss by Prince. Those songs take on the world, but they do it with just a few instruments. I can't explain why," he says, "but that's really all you need." 


 
Nerve.com Screening Room (http://www.nerve.com/screeningroom)
Sept. 2002

PLAYING SPOON
BY LORELEI SHARKEY


LORELEI SHARKEY: Your P.R. guy said you might be a little nervous about this interview.
BRITT DANIEL: No, I'm not nervous. I just said to go easy on me.

LS: Well, I'll try to be gentle. I'm not going to get into the gory details, but feel free to pass on any question, like you're on "Family Feud."
BD: Okay, that's cool.

LS: So why don't we get the hard part over first. Do you have a girlfriend?
BD: No, I don't right now.

LS: Do you want one?
BD: I've been a bit lonely.

LS: Because I feel like I fell in love with you when I listened to this album.
BD: [laughs]

LS: Really, your voice, the music — it's so damn romantic that it breaks my heart, but at the same time I can still dance to it.
BD: Well, that's great. That's a cool reaction.

LS: Have you ever felt like that, been so inspired by someone's art or talent that you developed a crush?
BD: Yeah. Malcolm X for instance.

LS: Really?
BD: No.

LS: So I was curious why you used to perform under the pseudonym Drake Tungsten?
BD: I think I just wanted a more entertaining name.

LS: I think Britt Daniel is such a rock star name, no?
BD: Yeah, well, I’m starting to come around to it.

LS: Are you looking forward to your tour?
BD: Oh yeah. I'm totally looking forward to getting out.

LS: Because you've been cooped up recording, or…?
BD: Well, just been cooped doing band business here in Texas for the last couple of months, and it's kind of cool to get on the road and be out of touch from a phone call — I mean, I guess we can still get phone calls, but there can't be as many expectations of you in terms of all of the things you got to do every day. It's just mostly find somewhere to get breakfast, drive for a really long time and then do a show. Those are the main responsibilities of the day. And those are pretty fun.

LS: And you're from Texas originally?
BD: Yeah. I grew up here.

LS: How come you don't have an accent?
BD: Smart people don't.

LS: I've never been to Austin, and my only point of reference is — sadly — "Reality Bites." Can you—
BD: That's set in Houston, I believe.

LS: Ooops.
BD: "Slackers" was set here.

LS: Well, I've seen that too! How would you describe Austin as a city compared to, say, New York?
BD: When you're in New York, it just seems like it's kind of a struggle every day. But it's a great struggle. Austin is more . . . it's easier to just get by.

LS: One of my favorite songs on the album is "Jonathan Fisk," the one about the bully. Did you get beaten up as a little kid?
BD: Well, I didn't have the excuse of being a little kid. I was more like a thirteen year old, fourteen year old. It didn't happen all the time, but, yeah, that is based on a real dude who would harass me on the way home from school in middle school.

LS: Did you ever get revenge?
BD: Yes. He came to all of our shows for about two or three years. And one of his main complaints with me as a kid was that the music that I listened to was wimpy or indicative of me being a fairy.

LS:But now he's a fan?
BD: Well, I haven't seen him in a while. But he definitely was a fan. He chilled out. You know, people grow up. I'm sure I wasn't the most mature little thirteen year old. But I didn't go out and beat people up because they didn't listen to Ozzy Osbourne either.

LS: The song "Fitted Shirt" on your last album rued how difficult it is to find a decent shirt that fits nicely: do you like to wear body conscious attire?
BD: I like to wear a tight shirt. Tight pants. It just looks better.

LS: When you play live, do you inspire more schoolgirl crushes than hardcore groupies?
BD: Well yeah, I definitely don't see any girls that look like they should be at Motley Crue shows.

LS: No panties being thrown?
BD: No.

LS: Never?
BD: One time somebody lifted up her shirt and thought that would be a way to get us to play a song that she wanted to hear.

LS: Did it work?
BD: No.

LS: Glad to hear it.
BD: I probably would have, but it was a really old song and we didn't know it. It was a nice gesture, but one that made us all a little uncomfortable.

LS: Do you ever do it to your own music?
BD: No. I haven't. That would be weird.

LS: Yeah, I would think so. But some people love the sound of their own voice.
BD: I like the sound of my voice and I do like to listen to our records. I know so many musicians who can't, but if they don't like their own record, I wonder what they're doing it for. So, in short, I do like to listen to my own music, but I haven't under those circumstances, and I doubt I will. It would be too ego.

LS: I'm just going to shoot off some of the short-answer questions from our Personals site: What's the last great book you read?
BD: Songwriters on Songwriting by Paul Zollo.

LS: Most humbling moment?
BD: I don't know if I can think of anything . . .

LS: This can be something really traumatic like being born, or something really embarrassing, like maybe getting beaten up by that kid.
BD: Yeah. Getting beat up for not listening to Iron Maiden.

LS: Celebrity you resemble most.
BD: Pardon?

LS: Do people ever tell you you look like somebody?
BD: [long pause] Pink.

LS: The song or album that puts you in the mood.
BD: Um . . . [long pause]

LS: Well, we know it's not your own.
BD: Yeah, exactly. How about the first Damned album.

LS: Okay. Who you're looking for?
BD: [long pause] Pass.






LOST AT SEA ONLINE MAGAZINE (http://www.lostatsea.net/LAS)
Sept. 2002

UNDER THE KNIFE: DISSECTING SPOON'S KILL THE MOONLIGHT
BY MARK SKIPPER


Even though their records tend to receive unanimous support, Spoon has refused to repeat themselves. Girls Can Tell smoothed out the punk edges found on A Series of Sneaks, but still managed to not only captivate the band’s established fans, but also draw in a whole new crowd. Once again, with the release of Kill The Moonlight, Spoon manages to throw out the rulebook and still record an album that is sure to top many year-end best of polls.


MARK SKIPPER: You guys recorded this album all yourselves, right?
BRITT DANIEL: We had this guy Mike McCarthy, who lives in Nashville come [to Austin]. For the last two albums he has come out and stayed with us in Austin, and it’s mostly him and Jim [Eno, drums] engineering and the three of us producing.

MS: I had read in an interview where you talked about major label bands having too much time, or too much of a budget to record, and that they never get a really good, inspired take, so I was wondering if you feel like you got some of those on this album and how your recording budget affects your records.
BD: We really are in a situation where we can take as long as we want so we could fall into that same trap. I wasn’t really saying major label as much - what I guess I meant to say was that the recording situation of today – yeah, you do have a situation where you can redo every take, every instrument so many times that you can just sort of lose sight of what the real thing is, and what an inspired performance is – where as back in the sixties, or fifties, or forties, or whatever, when people had to record for records, they had to get it right immediately. So they knew what they were playing was going to be ‘the thing’ and they better all get it together right away. I think that you can make good records by spending a long time on them, I’m just saying that that kind of old school mind frame of having to get it right was probably pretty inspiring and ended up producing a lot of great performances.

MS: Do you guys use digital equipment in your studios, like Pro Tools and that kind of thing?
BD: We do a little bit, but we always record first to tape and then if we run out of tracks – on the last two albums we have been working on a sixteen track and sometime we would run out of tracks – then what we would do is bounce some of the ones we had already recorded to tape over to Pro Tools and sync it up so that we could keep recording, but we’re definitely not a Pro Tools band. We’re not a band that goes straight to Pro Tools. I think that ends up making shitty sounding records for the most part.


Small Stakes

MS: This track really stands out being the first song on the album. I think people pop the album in and hear it and it gives the impression that you have really changed a lot since your last record.
BD: Yeah, for better or worse. I think some people hear that and are turned off by it. Maybe this isn’t the right record for them. We definitely thought it was the weirdest song that we recorded on the record.

MS: Is that why you put it right up front?
BD: I guess, yeah. We just thought this was the most exciting way to start the record.

MS: How did you go about writing that song, did you do it in the studio just playing around with sounds or was it written before?
BD: I wrote it at home at my apartment. I’ve only written maybe two songs on keyboards, that was one of them. I had kind of hit a stand still in terms of writing songs that I thought were good. I was coming up with all these songs that I would get to the end of them and think "well gee, that’s alright". So I thought I would change my method and I wrote a couple songs on keyboards and kind of went with the first thing that happened. Just "Ok, that’s a song", rather than molding and molding and shaping it, and "The Way We Get By" and "Small Stakes" were those two songs.

MS: I wanted to ask about the lyrics to, it seems like a lot of it has to do with the music industry stuff that you guys have had to deal with.
BD: I really wasn’t thinking about it that way. I was just thinking about people who live kind of small. Who aren’t ambitious or who maybe would like to be ambitious but they just end up doing what they do. It’s kind of an easy thing to do in Austin. I mean that’s one of the great things about Austin is you don’t have to be a player to feel like you're not a loser.


The Way We Get By

MS: This one is a lot more straightforward than "Small Stakes".
BD: Yeah, I guess the thinking was if we were going to start with this weird one, then we want to follow it with probably the most accessible song on the record. It’s sort of the "Small Stakes" lyrics part two.

MS: It seems like the lyrics glorify the little mundane things in life.
BD: Yeah, I’m into that. Ray Davies was great at that. I don’t think I’m at his level of doing that but that’s something I have always liked about him.


Something To Look Forward To

MS: The last record was called Girls Can Tell, but it seems like this one has several songs that use girls' names and center around little stories about them.
BD: Yeah, this is the only song on the record that I co-wrote. Me and Miles, the guy I co-wrote it with, kind of got the melody together and had this chorus which was very deadpan. But it didn’t really have any lyrics for a long time and we were just batting lyrics around and then finally at the last minute I came up with these, sort of a last minute fill-in-the-puzzle kind of thing.

MS: Was it inspired by anyone in particular, or was it just an idea?
BD: I think that there is some truth to those lyrics, but I wasn’t thinking about a specific thing.

MS: I get this idea from the lyrics of why a guy enjoys looking at a Victoria’s Secret magazine just as much as a Hustler. It leaves one more step to look ahead to.
BD: That’s one way of putting it. The older I get the more I feel like I want more…I want more than just a good time.

MS: Right, just a quick physical thing.
BD: Well, I don’t know, I’m not even thinking physical. It just seems like you need more from the people that you want to hang out with.

MS: More of an emotional connection?
BD: Yeah, more of an emotional connection.


Stay Don’t Go

MS: I think the obvious thing that is going to stick out to anyone the first time they hear this is the beat-box. Whose idea was that?
BD: That was my idea. The way that came about was, I wanted to program a beat to just play along to. I was playing on the upbeat rather than the downbeat and I wanted to play against something.

MS: Is it your voice?
BD: Yeah, it’s my voice. So I just very quickly made this loop to play against. I think the drum machine was on the other side of the room, so I thought this would be faster, not thinking that it would be something we actually recorded. But it ended up, you know [laughs], it sounded cool.

MS: Yeah!
BD: At first I was like – this is too goofy, we can’t use this – but it ended up, you know, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

MS: Another thing that stands out on this record is Jim not playing on every song, and I think that gives it a different feel.
BD: I like records that take you to all these different places.

MS: How are you planning on recreating that live?
BD: We have been in negotiations about that, I tell you. I don’t know what we are going to do. I don’t know if we are going to just not be able to play that song, or if we are going to just have Jim play a beat that mimics that. We are sort of figuring it out, and everybody in the band has a strong opinion about playing along to samples and whether that’s cool or not.


Jonathan Fisk

MS: This song feels like it could have fit on A Series of Sneaks, at least until the saxes kick in.
BD: It’s fast and heavy on the distorted rhythm guitar.

MS: Was it written a while back?
BD: It was written last summer like almost all of the rest of them, but it originally started out as an acoustic song. I tried it as an acoustic song; I tried it as an electric [song]; and then I went to something where it was like setting up some kind of offbeat loop that went along to it, and all those things just didn’t seem to work. So, as a last ditch effort Jim and I tried to make it more – tried to – say Ok, we’re going to play it garage.

MS: Just rock it out, huh?
BD: Yeah, and just play it, and so we did. We recorded it live in one little room. I think you can hear that.

MS: Who decided to add the saxophones on these couple of tracks?
BD: Me. I think that the saxophones work a lot better on "You Gotta Feel It" than they do on ["Jonathan Fisk"].

MS: I think they add a lot to the mix, they give it more of a rock ’n’ roll feel.
BD: My dad said that song sounded like The Blues Brothers to him.

MS: I had read somewhere that your Dad listens to all your records and that he got mad when he heard some cursing on…
BD: On Telephono. He definitely did not like Telephono. He said, "It SUCKS"! He told my little brother "It SUCKS"! He shouted it.

MS: [laughing] Has he heard this one?
BD: Yeah. I think he heard this one. I don’t think he likes it as much. He hasn’t had as many comments about it. But, he really likes "The Way We Get By".

MS: That one is going to be the first single right?
BD: [laughs] Well, what’s a single?

MS: Well, yeah.
BD: Yeah, I guess we’re trying to make a video for it. But, you know, we haven’t done that yet.

MS: Would you try to send it to MTV2?
BD: Yeah, exactly. You spend thousands of dollars and all these hours trying to come up with an idea, then actually doing the thing, then editing it, and going through all this trouble, and then they play it on a channel that I can’t get.

MS: Right, I’m the same way.
BD: They will probably play it on 120 Minutes once.

MS: I wasn’t even sure that show was still on.
BD: Yeah - it’s on - they have it now on MTV2. I mean just throw us a bone, put it on MTV at least.

MS: Right, I haven’t had cable in four years so I am out of that loop. It seems like the best thing bands can do these days if they make a video is post it on their web page.
BD: Theoretically, I mean, videos should be done – I guess – as art, but also so that you can reach people who have not heard you before who just happen to be watching this channel. It’s kind of lost when the only avenue for it is to put it on your web site.

MS: "Jonathan Fisk" starts a series of three songs that have a repeated image of a knife. Where did that come from?
BD: Hmmh. I hadn’t noticed that. "Paper Tiger" has a knife.

MS: Yeah, and so does "Someone Something"
BD: Hmmh. Interesting. Good point

MS: [laugh]
BD: I don’t know what it means. It’s just an image. It wasn’t planned.

MS: There was nothing in particular that appealed to you about that?
BD: Well, it just seemed to fit lyrically in the songs. But it wasn’t a coordinated effort. It’s interesting that they all come right in a row.

MS: I noticed that those three were right in a row and I thought, "Well, maybe there is something here."
BD: Yeah, that’s cool. Good eye.


Someone Something

MS: I heard this one early, you had played it on a radio show somewhere in Boston, and I downloaded it, I think from the Merge [records] page.
BD: Where do you live?

MS: Birmingham, Alabama.
BD: Oh, ok. I might have played it there too.

MS: Oh, really?
BD: I was on a solo tour in June.

MS: Oh, that’s right, I was out of town that night. I remember someone telling me that.
BD: A lot of people were.

MS: Didn’t play to big crowd huh? Who were you with?
BD: I was with Crooked Fingers and this band The Western Keyes opened up. The show was not advertised.

MS: Yeah, I sure didn’t know about it at all.
BD: Yeah, it literally was not advertised.

MS: I hate I missed that. This song seemed like a really simple arrangement and it didn’t hit me right away until I heard it on the record and heard Jim’s drumming with it. What was the songwriting approach to it?
BD: That one changed pretty massively. It originally sounded sort of like a hyper-rockabilly song. It was on guitar.

MS: It was written on guitar?
BD: It was…[Britt plays an altered version of the tune on his guitar]. It was just like that where I pictured the beat being dum-che-dum-che-dum-che… I call that hyper-rockabilly. I don’t know if that is an accurate description or what, but when I came back from Connecticut – I went to Connecticut to write all these songs – when we came back, we tried it and it just wasn’t working. I think that is one of the coolest things about Jim, and the way that we work together, is that even though that just was not working, we ended up turning it into one of my favorite songs on the record. So, we just knew it wasn’t working and I went home and worked on it some more, and my thought was let’s do it like "Waiting For the Man". [laughs] Jim just sorta - Jim doesn’t have that album by The Velvet Underground so he went at it a different way, but we put it on piano, my input was to put it on piano and make it like "Waiting For the Man". So we just changed it.

MS: So that one changed a whole lot.
BD: Yeah, a few of them changed a whole lot.

MS: Have you thought about playing it on guitar live?
BD: Yeah, when I played that solo tour I played the original version.

MS: Is there a recorded version of that?
BD: Not that’s released, just my demos.

MS: Any plans to?
BD: They’re really bad demos [laughs]. We need to turn in some tunes for a Merge compilation that is coming out. I should go back through them and look at them again but I don’t remember any of them being all that outstanding. They’re just interesting, you know, to see the way the songs changed.

MS: It’s always fun to hear another take on a song.
BD: Interesting but not necessarily good.

MS: I skipped over "Paper Tiger", so let’s go back to that one.


Paper Tiger

MS: This one really stands out on the record as being something way more progressive than anything you guys have done before. How did it get written?
BD: Progressive as in more modern sounding?

MS: Yeah, or just completely different. Not the guitar, drum, bass setup.
BD: The idea for that one came to me right when I was falling asleep. I found that, a lot of times, when you need to be creative or come up with a good idea that is a really good time to come up with ideas for something. Just think about something just as you are taking a nap or going to sleep. I get all kinds of good ideas that way. Somehow all the other things that distract your mind are slipping away and you can approach it from a different angle. So basically, I had these very basic elements of a song and I knew the beat was dum-che-dum-che-dum-che-dum [emulating the rhythm of "Paper Tiger"] like that, right when was fading off I had this idea of using [laughs] like a backwards-delayed kick and a frontwards-reverbed snare and making that the basic elements of the song and just playing keyboards on top of that rather than guitar. That’s how it happened.

MS: Will it not get performed live?
BD: We’re working on it. We just played it yesterday. We have got to work on a few things. Hopefully by the time we get to Atlanta….

MS: Is there anyway to play that one without samples?
BD: We could. We have really been trying to just - what we have been doing is using the click drum that is in the song, that being the only sample we use, and Jim playing the drums live. Instead of the [makes sound effect noise] he is actually hitting the [mimics the beat]. I think that we will figure it out.


Don’t Let It Get You Down

MS: This is my least favorite song on the record. The demo is actually pretty good, but I don’t think that we got it right. The recording, that is. It’s ok. Some people love it. I get the impression of the story being about a junkie?
BD: Yeah, that is sort of what I was thinking of, a girl that has lost her way.

MS: And in a way it backs up the "Small Stakes", "The Way We Get By" lyrics.
BD: Yeah, I think that’s right on.

MS: So none of these songs were left over from the back catalogue?
BD: No, they are all new. The three newest are – they were all written in Connecticut last summer except for "Paper Tiger", "Small Stakes" and "The Way We Get By", which were [written] once I got back home.

MS: Do you feel like you don’t write as well in Austin, are there too may distractions?
BD: Yeah, it is hard to focus on songwriting. Or, it has been in the past. I have kinda been working so hard lately think I could do it again. But I did go away last summer so that we could put out a record this year rather have to wait until 2003.


All the Pretty Girls Go To the City

MS: Was this song written on keyboards first?
BD: No, that was on guitar. I wrote the bass-line. I was playing it on guitar, but instead of playing chords I was just [plays guitar riff from the song] just the one note thing, which I think is a cool way to write. When you are writing to just one note, one string, it seems like you have more –you have a different direction than when you have a whole chord.

MS: It kind of gets this call and response feel between the guitar and the keyboards.
BD: Uh-huh.


You Got To Feel It

MS: This song has a lot of things going on with the weird echoing vocals. It’s a great headphone song, and the vocals are panned hard to one side in the mix aren’t they?
BD: We thought it made the song sound special.

MS: And the saxes show up again.
BD: Yeah, I like the saxes on that one.

MS: It’s really short. Did you guys edit it down?
BD: It was always that length. It was originally more of a strummy, acoustic song. I knew that we needed more band songs, so I brought it in to practice just to see how the band would approach it. It ended up just being a rock song, I guess.

MS: The lyrics seem to be a comment on how to go about creativity in songwriting.
BD: Yeah, I guess I was singing about musicianship. I mean, that sounds geeky, but I was sorta – one of my main things about doing music is that it just really has to be – you just gotta put it out – I think the best musicians are the ones that just do it by feel, like Paul McCartney for instance, ones that don’t necessarily know what the six or the seventh is, or they aren’t great guitar players, but they just bash it out. They just make it happen with emotion and with feeling. That’s music to me. It doesn’t hurt to know those things, but I just don’t think that you can rely on them to make a good song or to make a good performance.

MS: That interests me because I am a music student, but I continuously find more and more of the people whose music I listen to a whole lot are not from that school at all. Have you had any formal training?
BD: Well I was in choir when I was a little kid. That was about the only music theory I got up until I was about 13 or 14, but I never had piano or guitar lessons. I think that you can know all those things, Paul Simon is a wiz and he is definitely a guy who knows his music theory and actually uses that kind of stuff when he is writing the songs and he makes it work, but a lot of times that doesn’t work for people.


Back To The Life

MS: This is another track that has a drum loop without Jim really playing on it if I’m not mistaken.
BD: It’s not a loop. It’s us stomping and clapping in his living room, but we did it the whole way through. There are some variations in there.

MS: There are a lot of background noises, like conversations and things on the album.
BD: Yeah, we left a lot of it in there just to make it seem more casual. A lot of my favorite records are like that, like London Calling, it just sounds like they are having a party in the studio.

MS: What is this one about? I haven’t even been able to break it down.
BD: Ah, it’s not about anything. It’s sort of this – it’s not really about – I mean the lyrics are not great. But I guess if you had to stretch, you could say it’s like this Greek myth. This guy is telling his son to leave home and take up his scythe. It’s otherworldly.

MS: What is your favorite song lyrically on the record? Which one do you feel like you nailed?
BD: "The Way We Get By" has some pretty good ones.

MS: Out of all the songs you have written are there any that stand out?
BD: "Lines In the Suit", "Anything You Want", "Fitted Shit" - I like that one a lot.

MS: So a lot of the Girls Can Tell stuff. That was my introduction to the band. Since then I have gone back through everything.
BD: That was where a lot of people heard about us and I know that. I know that because [laughs] the sales were…

MS: Drastically different?
BD: Yeah, drastically different from any other album.

MS: I have heard you say you are a fan of mp3 sharing.
BD: Uh-huh.

MS: It seems like that is heading down the tubes.
BD: You don’t think people are going to be able to share files?

MS: Well the RIAA has continually…
BD: I think there will always be something that is peer-to-peer that they can’t stop. I mean I use Kazaa lite and it seems to work fine. I don’t think a model like Napster is going to work where there is actually a company, but if it is a bunch of people just doing it on their own, making their own applications, that are just shareware and aren’t for sale, how are they going to stop that?

MS: I get most of my files through FTP sites now, but it seems like if the RIAA manages to shutdown programs like Napster and Morpheus where the average user is getting songs released on major labels then it seems like they are accomplishing what they are setting out to do.
BD: I don’t think that overall it is going to hurt them. I heard some quotes that record sales were down a certain percentage in the last six months, but the economy is not as good now as it was. I don’t think that you can contribute it to that, but maybe you can contribute it to there being more shit bands on major labels, maybe you can contribute it to Wilco being dropped, I don’t know. There are so many things that factor in, but I definitely don’t think people being able to check out music first before they buy it is one of them.

MS: Being a college student, I know there is no way I could ever afford my music habit at all, so if I am even going to hear these bands that is my only option. But even if I don’t get a chance to pick up that record I will go see them play, or buy a shirt... something.
BD: I find that a lot of times I’ll download a song or two and I won’t end up buying the record, but I’ll know that the band is good and I will mention it to a lot of people, or I’ll buy the next one, or I’ll go to the show.

MS: It seems like if bands can earn your respect in any kind of way you would want to make sure they have the opportunity to keep making music.
BD: Right.


Vittorio E

MS: Where did the title come from?
BD: It’s the name of a subway stop in Rome. I just thought it was a nice sounding name, so I just jotted it down and when we needed a song title we used it.

MS: It closes out the album so well, was it written to be the album closer?
BD: No it wasn’t written that way, but yeah it does. In fact it seems so much like an album closer that I was very reluctant to put it on as the album closer. There are so many bands that put on the acoustic song last, but there is probably a good reason for that. Sometimes I think that is my favorite song on the record. I like the way it develops - in terms of it grows the whole time.

MS: Lyrically, it seems like it goes with "Back To The Life".
BD: I struggled with the lyrics. I don’t think the lyrics are that great. It’s just about a long relationship. Where does it go? How does it end? Does it End?

MS: Well I guess that gets us through the record. Thanks for taking so much time to answer all these questions.
BD: I haven’t done an interview where we talk about all the songs, so that’s cool. Have a good afternoon.
 

 

THE AUSTIN CHRONICLE (http://www.austinchronicle.com)
Aug. 23, 2002
 
SPOON KILLS AGAIN
The Way They Get By
BY RAOUL HERNANDEZ


Britt Daniel is at least an hour late, as opposed to Spoon's better half, stickman Jim Eno, who is 10 minutes early. When Soundgarden's song title finally arrives, just after the apparently unrock & roll hour of 11am Saturday morning, his normally furtive glance is filled with squinty red suspicion. In no time, he's being cryptic about how many utensils are in Spoon's personnel drawer (Josh Zarbo is back on bass; Kevin Lovejoy is the touring keyboardist), and who played piano on the new CD. "Eggo Johanson," repeats the cranky singer to the latter query.

Who's "Eggo Johanson"!?

"He's just gonna step in," mumbles Daniel. "He played tambourine on the record."

So, "Eggo Johanson" is you?

"Not necessarily."

But not "not necessarily." [Pause, laughter]

"All right, I want to strike this part of the conversation," fusses Daniel, Eno still laughing. "We didn't talk about 'Eggo.'"

Oh yes we did, and about Kill the Moonlight, Spoon's Tuesday offering, their second album for Chapel Hill's Superchunk indie Merge Records, and fourth full-length overall. Recorded in its entirety at Eno's home studio. A killing nightshine filling the space between last year's warm, ripe Girls Can Tell, and the duo's career high noir, 1998's A Series of Sneaks, recently reissued on Merge with bonus tracks "The Agony of Laffitte" and "Laffitte Don't Fail Me Now," Spoon's major label kiss-off.

"You coulda given me a wake-up call," yawns Daniel at Eno.

AUSTIN CHRONICLE: How does Kill the Moonlight extend Spoon's musical vision?
BRITT DANIEL: It's really hard for me to describe things like that, I just know that when we set out to record it, we wanted it -- in a very basic, and not good way of describing it -- to be more like Series of Sneaks. I wanted it to be a little bit weirder than Girls Can Tell. With Girls Can Tell, we wanted to make a classic pop record that wasn't too out there. Just a song, two seconds of space, then another song.

AC: Was stripping back Girls Can Tell a response to the sonic jangle of A Series of Sneaks?
JIM ENO: We really don't go about recording that way. It's basically Britt writes the songs and then we do to it what's needed. There's an overall idea of how the record should sound, but really, it's on a song by song basis.
BD: [On Girls Can Tell], I was trying to write songs like the Everly Brothers -- not that I pulled that off -- or Motown, Sixties soul stuff. I can't write that way, but that's where I was coming from. Those pop-soul records are the ones I go back to over and over and over again. I want to write songs that sound more classic rather than A Series of Sneaks, which my parents would definitely not like.

AC: Did that carry over onto Kill the Moonlight?
BD: Not as much, 'cause it wasn't as new to me.

AC: There's a good bit of keyboards on Kill the Moonlight. Was that you?
BD: Yeah, I did almost all of them.
JE: "Eggo" did.
BD: Oh, yeah. "Eggo" did.

AC: Has playing the piano affected your songwriting process?
BD: Not much, except for the first two songs on the album were written on piano, and those are the only two I've written that way. Writing on the piano establishes the song into a certain direction. When you're writing on an acoustic guitar, the strumming gives it a different feel.

AC: Both those songs feel like Austin; "Small Stakes" and "The Way We Get By," about people being complacent.
BD: Yeah, definitely -- "Small Stakes" in particular. Whenever I go to New York, I get that feeling you get there -- that everyone is trying to be something big. You have to strive hard just to exist in New York. That gave me the idea to write from that mind frame of someone who's dealing with much smaller stakes.

AC: Would the band be "bigger" if it relocated to, say, New York?
BD: Not at this point. I mean, we're doing all right.
JE: I think we're doing really well. I question what location has to do with it, really. I like being in Austin for touring, because you can do East Coast or West Coast in two weeks.
BD: There was a long time when we were making records that nobody seemed to be listening to and we weren't making money on the road. It's pretty cool that both of those things have turned around. And I don't mean "make money" on the road where we come home and buy a house. I just mean we used to go out and lose money on the road, and now we don't.
JE: We don't have to take tour support anymore.
BD: Which is a good thing, because Merge doesn't provide any. It's the first label we got to that didn't provide it, and we finally turned it around.
JE: It was six years before we even broke even on the road.

AC: Your songwriting seems very confident these days, Britt.
BD: I went to Connecticut last summer and lived in a town where I didn't know anybody, and did nothing but write all day so we could put this record out this year rather than waiting two years. I went and lived in New London, and didn't go out a single night I was there. Actually, I went out the last night.

AC: What part does Jim play in your songwriting process?
BD: I take the songs to a certain level, then we get together, and they become Spoon songs.
JE: It's sort of a compromise. Usually Britt will have an idea of where a song should be rhythmically, so I want to know what he's thinking. I like to hear the songs without anything on them, so maybe I'll come up with something he hasn't thought of.

AC: What's Kill the Moonlight, the title, refer to?
BD: It's the name of a futurist manifesto. In Italy, from about 1900-1920, there was a movement called the Futurists. There was a little pamphlet decreeing what they believed in. I didn't read it, I was just looking for titles. We almost called it Bring It.

AC: Characterize the albums. Telephono, Matador, 1996.
BD: Live show. When I think of Series of Sneaks, I think summer of '97, hot as fuck, working at Music Lane all the time.
JE: I think of tension.
BD: Total tension.

AC: Is that what makes the album so compelling?
BD: I think it's a weird record, because it was a compromise. We weren't happy with how it was sounding. I know [producer] John Croslin wasn't happy with the things we were making him do. And I think that, usually, when you compromise in music, you don't end up with a good thing. But somehow people like that record. I mean, I like it. At the time I wasn't happy with how it came out.

AC: Girls Can Tell.
JE: Reverb.
BD: We discovered reverb, man!

AC: Kill the Moonlight.
BD: Hard to say at this point. It feels a little weirder. To me, it feels like our most out-there record. We're essentially a rock band, we're not an experimental band, but ... [Trailing off]

AC: You guys ever hear from your old A&R guy, Ron Laffitte?
BD: I heard this great story about the Faint. You know that band? They're on Saddle Creek, which put out our Laffitte single originally. They were being courted by Ron Laffitte. When they were in New York, Ron and the president of Capitol Records took them to dinner, and as soon as the two of them walked up, the band handed Ron a copy of The Agony of Laffitte. By the accounts I've heard, he went white. The president of Capitol Records was like, "Oh, what's that?" And Ron didn't have anything to say throughout the entire evening. [Laughter all around] We owe those guys a couple rounds of drinks. 
 
 
 
 
TEXAS BEAT MAGAZINE
MAY 1998
 
INTERVIEW WITH BRITT AND JIM
BY KEITH A. AYRES

On Friday, March 20, 1998 at 12:30 P.M. I interviewed members of the Austin-based band Spoon in the bar at the Driscoll Hotel located in beautiful downtown Austin, Texas. I spoke with Britt Daniel and Jim Eno, who are the two original members of the band. The guys were upbeat and ready to give wacky answers with a straight face. The results can be rather amusing, if you can figure out where they're spoofing. The following transcription is the result of the conversation that took place that afternoon. [BD - Britt Daniel, JE - Jim Eno, TX Beat - Keith Ayres].

TX Beat:  How did you settle on the name?
BD: We settled on the name by…it was a really dumb move. We were playing a show like right after we got together, maybe two weeks after we first got together and we decided we have to have a band name by the time we play this show, so we kind of rushed into it. I kind of think that Spoon is one of the most boring band names in the world and probably conveys a pretty…it's just a boring band name. But, where it comes from is…there's this song by this band named Can and it's called “Spoon.” And I think also there [sic] record company is also called Spoon. And so it was the only thing that we could all agree on and y'know, we quickly made a decision and we have to live with it now. 

TX Beat: What makes the band “off kilter” as the bio states? 
BD: Are you referring to the bio that's on the back of the CD? 

TX Beat: No, it's the one Elektra faxed me. 
BD: Uh, do you have it with you? 

TX Beat: No. 
BD: No, ‘cause we haven't approved of any bio yet. Umm, we probably wouldn't use a word like “off-kilter,” but...

TX Beat: I'll have to send you guys this so you can see what they're sending out.
BD: Yeah. I'd like to see that. F*ckin' major labels man. 

TX Beat: How many bass players did you go through before you landed Joshua? 
BD: We only had one permanent bass player before him and she left right about the time our first full-length record came out. So we had to tour and we needed to play with people so we, there was two other guys – John Croslin, who's actually produced all our records, and Scott Adair, who toured with us. But neither of them recorded with us and they weren't really ever permanent members. So Josh is the second permanent member. 

TX Beat: How do you feel about the Austin Music Scene per se? 
BD: I love it. 

TX Beat: What about South by Southwest? 
BD: I love it. 

TX Beat: Are you running for political office? 
BD: No. 

TX Beat: When, where and how were you "discovered?" 
BD: Uh, I don't think we've been discovered yet. 

TX Beat: Did the band make any money off your deal with Matador or did you still have day jobs? 
BD: No, we didn't make any money off of that deal and some of us still have our day jobs. 

TX Beat: Did you work with Gerard Cosloy at Matador? 
BD: Yeah, y'know, we dealt with him all the time. 

TX Beat - How was that? 
BD: Uh, it was pretty fantastic. 

TX Beat: What about now with Elektra? 
BD - So far it's been…we have no complaints. 

TX Beat: Since Brian from Elektra is at SXSW working your record are his expenses getting charged back to Spoon? 
BD: That's a good question. We, uh, hope that our contract addressed things like that. I don't know. No, it's not. As I understand it, that's a publicity expense. 

TX Beat: Who is your A&R person at Elektra? 
BD: His name is Ron Laffitte. 

TX Beat: Is the release date for the new album still April 28? 
BD: Yeah, it's April 28 still. 

TX Beat: How long have you been associated with your producer John Croslin? 
JE: Since the beginning. 
BD: Actually except the first EP. 
JE: That was on Britt's answering machine. 

TX Beat: The first EP was recorded on the answering machine? 
JE: No. 
BD: Yes, we recorded it on our answering machine. Yeah, but he's produced everything that's been really produced. 

TX Beat: What bands do you listen to in your free time? 
BD: Suicide, The Silver Apples, The Everly Brothers…

TX Beat: What about you, Jim? 
JE: Um, Dwight Yoakam, The Crinkles, and Guided by Voices. 

TX Beat: Are you related to Brian Eno? 
JE: He's not returning any of my calls. 

TX Beat: Could you name some of your favorite Texas bands? 
BD: This is always a hard question because we'll leave somebody out who's our friend, but the first things that are coming to mind are Stertford, The Wannabes, who else…?
JE: The Damnations, The Gourds, Fastball, The Adults…

TX Beat: If anybody got left out, don't cry. Do you have any cool controversies or rumors about the band that you'd like to share or start? 
BD: No. 

TX Beat: What about road stories? 
BD: One time I got really drunk while we were on the road. 

TX Beat: Do you practice independent from the band? 
BD: I practice on my own. 
JE: We don't practice together usually. We just practice alone and then do shows. 
BD: Jim's tryin' to make a funny...
(Jim laughs) 

TX Beat: That's not like the song the Plasmatics recorded where all the bandmembers were isolated from one another and they played whatever they felt like? 
BD: Well, that's kind of how we made our last record? It's the last time we do it that way. 

TX Beat: That's what makes it "off kilter" I'd say. What kind of gear do you use? 
BD: I use a Fender Stage lead 2-12 amp and various guitars. 

TX Beat: Do you have a booking agent now? 
JE: Yes. 

TX Beat: Who is it?
JE: Jim Romeo. 

TX Beat: Where is he based and what company is he with? 
JE: New York, ICM Twin Towers. 

TX Beat: Are you guys playing during the conference? 
JE: We played last Wednesday night…
BD: For a recap you can check the Austin-American Statesman. There's a review today.

TX Beat: Was it a good one? 
BD: Actually, it was a good review; it was probably better than we deserved. 

TX Beat: What does the future hold for Spoon? Are you guys goin' on tour to support the record when it comes out? 
BD: We are hopin' to do a tour with Busta Rhymes (pause), who's also on Elektra.

TX Beat: Do you have any new material you're working on for the next album? 
BD: Well, actually I have been pretty lax about writing songs and I need to get back into it, but, uh…

TX Beat: How do you select the material for the album? 
BD: Well, we basically sit down in a room with our A&R guy and say, ‘Which songs do you like? Which songs will make us big stars.' 
JE: And if he wants us to change the song, like add a chorus or somethin', y'know, we're always open for stuff like that. 

TX Beat: What studio did you guys record your album in? 
JE: Well, we recorded at about six different studios here in Austin…

TX Beat: Go ahead and name them…
JE: Uh, Music Lane, Hit Shack "A" Room, Hit Shack "B" Room, Blue World Music, um, what else? My house and Britt's house. 

TX Beat: Any closing comments? 
BD: (After a long pause Britt makes some clicking noise with his mouth).