“Everything Hits at Once” - Spoon
(Words/music: Britt Daniel, available on Girls Can Tell, Merge Records 2001)
More than any other band on Merge’s roster (and most bands in rock music right now), Spoon plays tight rock and roll. They grab hold of every melodic and rhythmic thread and pull them to their most taut, and just like a drum’s head stretched to its limit, interesting sounds develop right before the snapping point. Spoon’s songs never reach that breaking point, but these songs find their own funky reverberations even at their most precise extremes. Rather than sounding mechanical or soulless, their precise rhythms and studio tweaks infuse the song with an unlikely groove.
Even if they’re repetitive, it’s not repetition in the same way that trance music repeats phrases. “Everything Hits at Once” builds around a defined core. The guitars, keyboards, and drums establish a groove and keep returning to it over the course of the song. Meanwhile, the other elements of the song orbit around this center, periodically disappearing into the mix only to return again. Even Britt Daniel’s vocals work like this – rather than have a chorus as a celebratory refrain, Daniels’ repetition feels like a weary mind running through the same thought process. He promises that he can change his mind yet keeps returning to this one thought. Just like the music, Daniel feels trapped by the gravity of his situation. While it leads to paranoia for his protagonist, the listener enjoys a woosy groove and a catchy tune revolving around us.
More on Spoon: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm
3 Notes