The New Spoon Album

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to Spoon’s Trans­fer­ence for the past cou­ple weeks. They’re on of my favorite bands. Britt Daniel has become a great lyri­cist and the songs have got­ten catch­i­er with every album. That is, until now.

I heard an inter­view with the band last night that made Trans­fer­ence more appeal­ing than it is. Daniel and Jim Eno made the album’s weak­ness­es sound like strengths. There’s no hid­ing the fact that their efforts to make an “ugli­er” record suc­ceed­ed, so why not embrace it?

They knew what sound they want­ed and pro­duced the record them­selves, but that’s not the issue. Trans­fer­ence is imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize­able as a Spoon record; the prob­lem is that it’s not a very good one. You’d have to go back to the dar­ing, equal­ly uneven Kill the Moon­light to hear some­thing as infu­ri­at­ing as this. Sequenc­ing, not pro­duc­tion, stops Trans­fer­ence in its tracks.

Spoon buried the best songs in the mid­dle third of the album, start­ing with “Writ­ten in Reverse” and end­ing with the plain­tive strains of “Good­night Lau­ra,” a song that veers dan­ger­ous­ly close to maudlin which would­n’t be so bad if this weren’t a Spoon album.

We’ve come to expect great things. Their sound might be best described as Bil­ly Joel songs as reimag­ined by Wire. Songs like “Sis­ter Jack” and “The Under­dog” bur­nished their rep­u­ta­tion as a band on the cusp of great­ness. There’s noth­ing of that cal­iber here. 

Trans­fer­ence should’ve been Spoon’s mag­num opus, the prod­uct of two decades worth of hard work from a band at the height of its pow­er. Instead it’s the album you can tell the unini­ti­at­ed they can safe­ly ignore.

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A Quick Word on Philly Pizza

The Philadel­phia piz­za scene is hor­ri­ble. I know Doug Wallen ded­i­cat­ed a small part of his life to assess­ing the Philly piz­za cul­ture and I’m sor­ry to not have tak­en part. I have, how­ev­er, sam­pled more than my fair share of piz­za and, con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, nev­er favored any par­tic­u­lar spot just out of dumb neigh­bor­hood loyalty.

Part of the prob­lem is that peo­ple will set­tle for bad piz­za. I would not. I tried piz­zas all over town in a quest to find some­thing I could hon­est­ly endorse with­out reser­va­tion. It was impos­si­ble. Peo­ple would rec­om­mend their favorite spots and I’d bring a pie home only to dis­cov­er their favorite was­n’t up to snuff.

Helen and I had been feast­ing on Gian­fran­co’s piz­za, which I would pick up down at 3rd and Mar­ket. It was­n’t bad and was a far cry bet­ter than most of the deliv­ery spots that serve Port Fish­ing­ton. (I’m sor­ry Rus­ti­ca, but your piz­zas are all too smoky and sog­gy for my per­son­al taste. San­tuc­ci’s isn’t bad, actu­al­ly, but out­side the deliv­ery range.)

We decid­ed enough was a enough and dri­ving that dis­tance for piz­za was just sil­ly. We searched the neigh­bor­hood for some­thing decent, but Cas­sizzi’s was­n’t cut­ting it. We final­ly had to break down and take the nuclear option: call­ing ahead for pick­up at Tac­conel­li’s.

I’ve put this off for some time. We know it by rep­u­ta­tion and had even tried it a cou­ple times, but weren’t so blown away that it seemed worth plac­ing a piz­za order at 11 a.m. Piz­za is a spon­ta­neous dinner!

Well, after two con­sec­u­tive nights of Tac­conel­li’s piz­za, I can safe­ly say we’ve been con­vert­ed. It’s worth the has­sle, espe­cial­ly if you live with­in five min­utes dri­ve of Tac­conel­li’s like we do. We’re no longer piz­za nomads, wan­der­ing Philly’s desert.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 6

My Macbook Needs Help

I recent­ly had a stroke of bad luck with my oth­er­wise mar­velous Mac­book. It was act­ing fun­ny, so I tried to restart. It stalled out and I tried doing a hard reboot.

Oops.

I found myself star­ing at a grey screen, the fan whirring out of con­trol. Fun!

Now I’m try­ing to fig­ure out whether I should take it to an Apple store, or just vis­it a repair ser­vice now that my Apple­care term has ended. 

Feel free to offer your two cents in the comments!

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0

A New Year in Music

2009 was a dis­as­trous year for me and music. I was real­ly turned off to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that I might like any­thing. I revert­ed to old habits, lis­ten­ing to a dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount of met­al, with­out real­ly explor­ing fur­ther. For some­one who in the past prid­ed him­self on catholic taste, it was some­thing of a dis­ap­point­ment. Worse, I’ve not felt a part of the music scene for a while now and that real­ly trou­bles me. I mean, my title is music edi­tor, right?

With­out get­ting bogged down in all the hows and whys, I’m real­ly excit­ed for 2010 already. Two of my favorite bands, Spoon and Liars, have albums out this Jan­u­ary and it’s the time of year where I obsess over these releas­es, often at the expense of ignor­ing wor­thy albums that come along lat­er in the year’s pro­mo­tion­al cycle.

I used to think it was stu­pid for bands to release albums this time of year. Boy, was I wrong! When LCD Soundsys­tem releas­es albums in the dead of win­ter, they cap­ture more atten­tion than they would if they tried to shoe­horn their stuff into the March and Octo­ber gluts. It’s the per­fect time of year to real­ly get famil­iar with a record. You’re trapped in the house or car any­way, so you might as well crank up the stereo.

I cel­e­brate the new year in music by delet­ing every­thing in iTunes and start­ing over fresh. Right now I’m lis­ten­ing to Spoon, but I’ll be check­ing out new music from Yeasay­er, Ted Leo, Liars, Blood Feath­ers, Vam­pire Week­end and Gil-Scott Heron (!) soon enough. What a great way to start 2010!

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