"Paper Tiger", by Spoon. Question: how much can you strip out of a song before it ceases to be a "song"? This is a question that Spoon appear intent on finding the answer to. The answer seems to be: quite a lot. I went second-hand-CD shopping a couple of weekends ago (thanks to Uncle Kevin) and one of the things I came home with was Spoon's 2002 album "Kill The Moonlight". You get the impression, if you listen closely, that Spoon work hard figuring out what goes into each corner of each song, and, even more crucially, what gets left out. "Paper Tiger" stands out for being so minimal as to be almost an abstraction, but it is in fact as strong a pop song as you could wish for.
The more Spoon I listen to, the more impressed I am with what it is that they do. And with what it is that they don't do. It's the "fish John West reject" methodology applied to the pop song.
