Every once in a while, you should go to an actual record store and buy an actual record*.
It's good for the soul, it helps you bond with the music contained within the physical product (as opposed to, y'know, fond memories of which computer you were sitting at when you went through some dodgy, ad-filled download site and waited for Record X to come through the pipe, which it eventually did but not before crashing a couple of times and anyway it turned out to have one corrupted song on it), and it might even help some poor, struggling music retailer stay in business for another week or so.
(Oh the times we live in.)
So anyway, for me it was the new Spoon album, "They Want My Soul". Spoon records take a while to sink in. Which is fine, because one only comes along every three or so years. I expect this one will be no different. It starts off with a couple of readily identifiable but perhaps not exactly jaw-dropping examples of Spoon songs. The third track, "Rainy Taxi", is where you say to yourself, This song is going to reveal itself as a Spoon classic. The fourth track, "Do You", is an instant earworm that will have you pinwheeling around the living room.
But it is the fifth track, "Knock Knock Knock", that stops you in your tracks, stares into your eyes, unblinking, and says: Yes, I do remind you of your (but nobody else's) favourite Pink Floyd album, "Animals". You got a problem with that?
And guess what? I got no problem with that whatsoever. But I can't say I was expecting it.
(Consumer advisory: contains whistling.)
*When I say record, I mean, for myself, a CD: the trendy thing at the moment is to buy vinyl, but as someone who has shelves of vinyl from the first time around, and who was here at the birth of the Compact Disc Digital Audio (TM), I have no lingering nostalgia for the pops and clicks, the inevitable skips and unintended locked grooves, the fuzzy "s"s, of vinyl; they were an impediment to hearing the music then, and I can only assume that they are still an impediment to hearing the music. Still, if that's what you want ...
