iTunes Music Review - Gimme Fiction

• Gimme Fiction

  • 10 out of 5
  • Spoon
  • Reviewed by Bryan Chaffin
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  • Gimme Fiction by Spoon is a terrific album by an Austin band that I was lucky enough to catch on an Austin radio station during a Christmas visit. "I Turn My Camera On" was the name of the tune, and its slowed-down Franz Ferdinand meets Beck singing "Emotional Rescue" flavor immediately grabbed me, and I literally went out to get the CD a couple of hours later.

    "Was It You?" also reveals the Beck influence on this band, but the rest of the album seems to have more roots in the 70s -- and I do mean the part of the 70s that didn't suck -- than anything more recent.

    The band lays down instrumental tracks somewhere between minimalist and layered that act as the perfect backdrop to the vocals of Britt Daniel. At the same time, however, neither those vocals nor the instrumentation sound like an afterthought, and that's something few bands know how to do.

    For instance, listen to the interplay between bass, guitar, and vocals in "Was It You?" or the integral role the sparse clapping plays in "They Never Got You." In Gimme Fiction, every note and every sound seems to have a purpose, combining into one of the best albums of 2005, and one of the better recordings of the last five years.

    You can stream a video for "Sister Jack," the single the band's label is pushing, at Merge Records' Web site.

    Favorite Tunes: I Turn My Camera On, Was It You?, My Mathematical Mind, They Never Got You, The Infinite Pet

   

   

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• TMO Staff
• alternative