release date: july 10, 2007
label: Merge Records
03-09-09 review by: skeeter

I've just listened to Gimme Fiction, Don't Kill the Moonlight, and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga consecutively. I can't stop tapping my foot - four hours later. There's no mistaking a Spoon song: crackling vocals, irrepressibly pounding beat, and tasty hand claps. With past albums, they've come across as catchy but scattered.

With Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga they've hit upon the musical equivalent of the mathematical "Golden Ratio." However formulaic the latest and greatest album, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is strictly organic - almost primal. Ten thousand years of human evolution draws us to toe-tapping music.

Each track has universal appeal and follows a time-tested formula with an iconic Spoon flavor. The artists show their mastery of the method with the welcomed addition of horns, perfected on "The Underdog," as well as other instrumental frills. For those of you more-discerning listeners, the syncopated clapping on "The Underdog" is nothing short of simple brilliance.

As if to throw their middle finger up in defiance, "The Ghost of You Lingers" betrays whatever stylistic genre in which the critics would place this album. It calls upon the band's early years, after being signed then dropped by a major record label. If Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is an etude in the basics of catchy songwriting, then the song "The Ghost of You Lingers" is Spoon's way of letting us in on the fuck-you to the music industry - and it's a damn fine song (a live performance will knock you on your ass).

Nothing is sloppy on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, nothing is out of place. The album contains the minimum necessary ingredients of a rock/pop hit; each song is meticulously built according to a blueprint, each layer is precariously stacked on top of another. The result is 10 songs, almost all under three-minutes, that have "commercial appeal" despite the band's "Finer Feelings."

check it:
more by skeeter
Spoon's website
The Merge Records website


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