By Berlinda Recacho
I've been a casual – but fickle – fan of Spoon ever since I first heard the funky ear worm "I Turn My Camera On" – not by listening to Gimme Fiction, the 2005 album it originates from. Rather, it accompanied a snappy choreographed scene of undercover surveillance on an episode of Veronica Mars – the same television show in which Spoon's lead singer Britt Daniel made a cameo a season later, belting out Elvis Costello's "Veronica" at a karaoke bar, a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the eponymous teen sleuth. Spoon is a favorite band that I don't know much about, save that the members come from Austin, Texas, and they have been around for almost 30 years. I wouldn't take my reticence personally if I were them; I'm not a completist and I'm not sequential. I like to go into museum exhibits backwards, through the exit if I'm not caught and set on the right path.
And Spoon refuses to fit a mold, opting to shape-shift and keep the audience guessing. I liked 2007's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga for the rousing anthems of "The Underdog" and "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb", but still would not commit, instead opting to download a copy of my brother's CD. In fact, my first Spoon vinyl was 2001's Girls Can Tell, bought on a whim on Record Store Day 2012, on the strength of their nod to Eighties pop soul "Everything Hits at Once". I was not disappointed, but still I remained at arm's length, even after I caught Spoon live in 2017 at Merriweather Post Pavilion as part of a dreamy quadruple bill (with Ex-Hex, Andrew Bird, and Belle & Sebastian). The brooding, preening rock star that led his band through a tight and impressive set onstage did not at all resemble the snarky karaoke singer he played on TV. Still, I would wait five years to buy another Spoon album, 2022's Lucifer On the Sofa. What can I say? I was possessed.
No, really. After "Wild", "The Hardest Cut" and "My Babe"got stuck on repeat on my mental turntable – I was ready to commit. I made a pilgrimage to The Sound Garden in Fells Point specifically to buy Lucifer on the Sofa. There's something seductive about the red/cream/black color scheme of the album cover, the primitive menacing portrait split across the bias into a diagonal yin-and-yang, the matte finish, which reveals itself after peeling off the requisite shrinkwrap. As a visual artist, I do judge albums by their covers, but as a music fan, the content must hold true. Spoon follows through on the promise of its design by sending listeners on a sonic deep dive down a rabbit hole. I love vinyl, and Lucifer On the Sofa seems meant to be heard on a record player. The band has stated that they wanted to capture the immediacy of a live performance. The spaces between tracks are less hard stops than pauses for breath, an inhalation between phrases, shifts in thought. The songs are expertly crafted, but don't feel like true singles. They feel like interlocking pieces that create a more complex whole.
This song cycle is like a Faustian bargain – a recurring theme with Spoon (see 2014's They Want My Soul). "The Devil & Mr. Jones" states this literally: "Everybody/Saving up for what he is selling/Mister Jones/He got the bags/You can carry yourself to Hell in. "On The Radio" is a mournful autobiographical reflection on the path that you can't help but take: "They say how come you still play that game, John Britt?/Cause I was born to it…they're talking to me/all night on the radio. Music – rock music, specifically – feels like a time-looped reenactment of selling one's soul for attention, fame, and money – all fleeting and superficial things, easy to covet. Lucifer on the Sofa turns this allure back onto the viewer, like two mirrors facing each other and reflecting into infinity. You can't look away, too captivated with your own image, even as the band dictates a less than rosy epilogue. "Satellite" describes the ersatz photograph with no correction, no need for redirection, unheard of in this age of airbrushing and editing programs. With things so broken, why would you want to stick around? The benefits of disconnection are celebrated in "Held": "For the first time in my life/I am moving away/from within the reach of me" and "Astral Jacket": "In the blink of an eye/you let yourself go/You lose all track of time". But we're all in this disaster together, and the band plays us off the stage as we move in synchronicity to our shared fate.
The warm and haunting title track closes the album with an unsettling glimpse of "Lucifer on sofa/Staring at you" amid a litany of regrets: "Tell me truth later/And just lie tonight/For now I need peace/and nothing feels right/And I'm stuck with all your pictures/A box of cigarettes/ All your old records/Yes and all your old cassettes". There are far worse fates than to be stuck in this spooky groove – and on vinyl the album doesn't really end as the second side concludes in a series of tones that skip into the deadwax. If your record player is like mine and doesn't have automatic return, it will play indefinitely.
Since the Pandemic befell us almost three years ago, the sofa has adopted multiple identities: home office, theater seating, island of respite, fortress of isolation. Lucifer is the morning star, the original fallen angel, the antihero of John Milton;s Paradise Lost. It's no wonder that in Spoon's version – Beelzebub, Old Scratch, Could it be…Satan? – however you might want to refer to him – holds court from the center of your living room. And if that weren't enough, wait, there's more! For its next trick, the band exiles El Diablo out to the rock that orbits our planet in Lucifer on the Moon, a track-by-track remix by British dub legend Adrian Sherwood.
The moon has a pull on the tides, locked in a dance hold with the earth, always facing its partner. Moonlight is nothing but reflected sunlight, but clair de lune is imbued with properties of enchantment and transformation. Spoon's source material is so rich, it can stand to be reinterpreted so soon after its release. Lucifer On the Moon, takes that original plummet down the rabbit-hole sidewise through a wormhole to a parallel universe transmitted to a receiver in space, two rides for the price of one eternal soul.
Lucifer on the Sofa and Lucifer on the Moon are out now via Matador Records.
[Photo: Matador Records]\