same as it ever was

A few quick words on Transference, the seventh album by Spoon. I’ve reviewed this album a few days ago “elsewhere” – not sure when it’ll surface though – in which I kinda pegged the album as sort of a “stopgap release” for the band, as compared to their career-best Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (2007). I wonder if that remark of mine was made was too hastily, but I’m sticking by it nevertheless because it is a fair assessment; no one listening to Transference, good as an album it is, would seriously place it in the same bracket as Spoon’s finest work. Since getting out of its major label troubles with Elektra in the nineties, singer Britt Daniel and main collaborator Jim Eno have established an enduring sonic identity on their third album, 2001’s Girls Can Tell (their first on the indie label Merge, which have released all their records since), for Spoon to refine their avant-pop garage sound with each album, at the same time developing into one of the bastions of indie rock. Transference manages to nail that immediate pop feel of a Spoon album, toggling effectively around the band's trademark tight, insistent rhythms, but the new songs just do not hold together as well as it normally would. That said, “Written In Reverse” does sound phenomenal and the tenderly lit ballad “Out Go The Lights” is a deliquescent wonder – and these two songs alone would be enough for Spoon to continue transcending their cult status.