Spoon: A back catalogue to compile a career-spanning retrospective

Starting a band as “an excuse to get up on stage and play weeknight bar gigs” is as good a reason as any, we suppose.

Yet over 25 years later, Spoon – from Austin, Texas, and named after the title of the Can song – have graduated from poorly attended bar gigs to having enough of a back catalogue to compile a career-spanning retrospective.

Across nine studio albums (from 1996’s debut, Telephono, to 2017’s Hot Thought – although there is, curiously, nothing here from their 1990s output), Spoon have grappled with varying levels of success as well as trying on different music styles for size.

Despite Spoon’s indie achievements (their profile in the US is by no means mainstream), however, there is a commercial, if somewhat generic, lushness that has occasionally transferred from studio to radio and television/film.

They have had some small windfalls with such exposure (US TV shows such as Scrubs, Veronica Mars, Gossip Girl).

But ultimately their brand of low-key indie/alt.rock, best exemplified by tracks such as You Got Yr Cherry Bomb, Hot Thoughts, and Inside Out, supports them – and the listener – just above the don't-give-up line. spoontheband.com