Facebook: Spoon Day 3: Girls Can Tell (2001)
Oh, dear friends, a tale of sadness have I to relate today! Remember ultraslick Elektra VP and A&R man Ron Laffitte from yesterday? The guy who made all the right promises and persuaded our heroes to sign a multi-album deal? That guy?
Yeah, well. When A SERIES OF SNEAKS came out, Laffitte almost immediately started acting squirrelly, dodging Spoon’s phone calls and such. Four months later, he was fired from Elektra (something he had probably known was coming for some time). Soon after, with a low-selling album on their hands that they didn’t understand, Elektra dropped Spoon as well.
A less ambitious band would have retreated to lick its wounds. In fact, Spoon did that for a while as well. Britt Daniel moved to New York and took a job at Citibank, thinking the band was done. But Spoon eventually pulled themselves together and vented their anger in as public a way as possible. 1999 saw the release of the single “The Agony of Laffitte” (b/w “Laffitte Don’t Fail Me Now”) on Saddle Creek Records (the tiny Nebraska label founded by Conor Oberst and his brother Justin). Despite the punny titles, the two tracks dripped with mournful vitriol. (Elektra’s president, Sylvia Rhone, also gets namechecked for reneging on a promise to keep Spoon around even after Laffitte’s ouster. Metallica’s GARAGE DAYS EP, an Elektra release, gets a mention in the first line as well.)
When they started touring again, the “Laffitte” single made them minor heroes to the fans who turned out to see them. Encouraged, they began recording again, not just on their own but on their own terms. Britt had become interested in adding instruments beyond guitar, bass and drums to their sonic palette, and in infusing his songwriting with a more classic pop sensibility. Jim Eno for his part was becoming more and more proficient as an audio engineer. With some production help from Mike McCarthy (who would continue to co-produce with Britt and Jim right up through 2007’s GA GA GA GA GA), they soon had an album to start shopping around, GIRLS CAN TELL. It took some time, but the record eventually made its way to Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan, co-founder of Merge Records, who promptly signed them.
Spoon’s first release on Merge, however, was an EP called LOVE WAYS. This was actually recorded after GIRLS CAN TELL but released first, maybe to set the stage for the band’s updated sound. LOVE WAYS was performed and recorded entirely by Britt and Jim, with no one else involved, and puts a real spotlight on their working partnership (which one critic has called more “Byrne/Eno” than “Jagger/Richards”). Britt handles most of the songwriting, but Jim is often the one who finds the right rhythm and studio setting for each song.
GIRLS CAN TELL was a hit upon release, at least by indie rock standards. More importantly to the band’s stability, its songs started finding their way into TV-show soundtracks.
Spoon was back, and now they had an actual career.
(Again I’ve inserted 30 seconds of silence into the playlist to separate the single from the EP, and the EP from the LP.)
EXTRA: SINGLES, B-SIDES & MISC TRACKS (2001-2002)
Today’s bonus listening includes the B-sides from the “Anything You Want” single, a live bootleg track, and brief little instrumental track from a split single with Swearing at Motorists.
EXTRA EXTRA: NADA SURF COVER SPOON
During the Kate Bush immersion, someone posted Nada Surf’s version of “Love and Anger.” That came from their 2010 covers album IF I HAD A HI-FI, which also includes this cover of Spoon’s “Agony of Laffitte.”
I wanted to post this for a couple of reasons. First, I’m a fan of Nada Surf and, thanks to mutual friends, I’ve had a chance to hang out with a couple of the guys in the band recently. (Guitarist Doug Gillard, who also plays with Guided by Voices, ended up with a copy of my book at a white-elephant party, and I actually sat next to singer/songwriter Matthew Caws at dinner on Christmas eve. Okay, enough annoying and gratuitous namedropping.)
Second, and more to the point, Nada Surf too was fucked over by Elektra after one album and managed to bounce back. That gives their cover some extra resonance. More info:
http://www.inmusicwetrust.com/articles/57h07.html
NEWS ALERT!
http://www.austinchronicle.com/music/2001-03-16/spotlight-spoon/
Austin Chronicle, 16 March 2001
“Spotlight: Spoon”
“This record is the first one I really like enough to say, ‘Okay, we did something that, if we’re no longer a band next year, I’m always going to be, “I really like this one. I think it’s really good.”’ It’s something that, at least for me, will stand the test of time.”
NEWS ALERT!
http://www.magnetmagazine.com/2015/07/21/magnet-classics-spoons-girls-can-tell/
Magnet, 21 July 2015
“The making of Spoon’s Girls Can Tell”
SPOONTV
“Jealousy” (official video)
Um, why is Jim doing that to Britt?
SPOONTV2: SAD FISH ALERT!
“Everything Hits at Once” (official video)
SPOONTV3: FAN EDITION
“Lines in the Suit”
Spoon’s liberal upload policy means that a number of folks have been able to create their own videos for their favorite songs. I’ll highlight two or three of my favorites throughout the immersion. Here’s the first.
DAILY COVER TRACK ROUND-UP
“Me and the Bean” (The Sidehackers and/or The Rite Flyers)
“Decora” (Yo La Tengo)
“Lowdown” (Wire)
Three cover tracks to report today, bringing our running total to eleven.
The one you’ve definitely never heard before is “Me and the Bean,” the second John Clayton song we’ve heard this week. I can’t track down a copy of the original. Britt in interviews has attributed it to Clayton’s band The Sidehackers, but other reputable sources online attribute it to Clayton’s later band The Rite Flyers. Both bands may actually have recorded it in demo form.