"The Mystery Zone", by Spoon. Depending on who you read, the first three "major" releases for 2010 are "Transference", by Spoon, "Realism", by The Magnetic Fields, and "IRM", by Charlotte Gainsbourg. The first to reach these four walls (and, unless I was looking in the wrong places, the one that hasn't leaked) is "Transference". Spoon, without doubt, are major. They are so good at what they do, so confident, so comfortable in their own skins, that sometimes all you can do is smile. (Imagine if REM had maintained their sense of playful experimentalism, combined with swagger, beyond the first two albums (but remembering that REM managed still to release another four - at least - classic albums after that).)
The new album, on first listen, is a more abrasive, somewhat less user-friendly affair than "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga". It sounds like the members of Spoon have been giving their old post-punk records a spin or two (there is more than a touch of Martin Hannett in some of the production gewgaws). But they know what they are doing, and they do it well. "The Mystery Zone" stands out, perhaps because it is the song that most recalls "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga". Whatever. It has a very classy piano vamp, and strings that could kill. And, as usual with Spoon, the elements of a perfect pop song are stripped back to the absolute basics before various bits are added back - and those are not necessarily the bits you were expecting.
The liner notes for the album finish with the following statement: "Buying records from record shops is cool." How did they know?
