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Spoon Headlines Bear Shadow
Written By: Marlene Osteen | Issue: March 2023
Spoon brings decades’ worth of Indie cred to Bear Shadow. For more information, visit bearshadownc.com.
Spoon
When Spoon ascends the stage at Bear Shadow on Friday, April 28, audiences will see a band that has long been held up by fans and critics as a paragon of Indie-rock consistency.
Formed in 1993 after front man Britt Daniel and drummer Jim Eno left a rockabilly group called the Alien Beats, Spoon was really a product of its members coming to Austin in search of the bohemian life that had existed in the city since the late 1960s, when it became a hippy oasis.
Over three decades, Spoon has quietly built one of modern rock’s most robust discographies – putting out multiple alternative hits and scoring a handful of Top 5 albums on the Billboard rock charts.
“They have never made a bad record. They make hits with a nervous guitar, add soul, try electro, greet Prince and The Kinks as well as Motown and Wire,” said Rolling Stone Magazine. But whatever the mix, the results always sound like Spoon, forever catchy and surprisingly ingenious, with strokes of brilliance and inventiveness.
Last February they released their first album in five years, Lucifer on the Sofa.
As one critic remarked, “Spoon have never cranked up their Spooniness so Spoonfully.” It was also their first recording to receive a Grammy nomination. It has been described as one of the band’s “rawest and most straight-ahead albums” and signals the band’s delight in returning to good old rock ‘n roll music. The album’s track Wild is a loving tribute to Neil Diamond. In an era governed by streaming, the song On the Radio, which tells the story of a guy listening to the radio is surely an anomaly. “The song is about how radio made me feel good. When I was lonely, it comforted me a bit and gave me evidence that there was an outside world where people were interacting and life was still happening out there,” Daniel said.
In making Lucifer on the Sofa, Daniel was determined not to lean on technology. “This time it was just more about the rhythm, the syllables, the chords, the melodies.” The album has been universally praised as their best yet, “one of those records that revive forgotten dreams.”
All this adds up to Spoon getting back on the road and reuniting with audiences.
As Daniel said, “People go to rock shows to experience real music and real songs that mean something to me, and that’s always going to be powerful. The important thing is to have a shared experience with an audience. The thrill of that will never go away.”
