Going Ga Ga (Ga Ga Ga)

Photo by David Greenwald

The latest (greatest?) Spoon album is a record of handclaps and shaker eggs, of joy only fettered by the band’s return to taut guitar lines and wiry melodies. There’s barely a trace of the power-pop aspirations that showed themselves on Gimme Fiction, which in retrospect should’ve been a split LP — Old Spoon and New, Big Star-Loving Spoon.

Old Spoon is back, but Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga isn’t a rehash of their earlier material. The band is more adventurous than ever, expanding on the sonic template of Girls Can Tell and Kill the Moonlight with fuller arrangements and an indefinable but wonderful enthusiasm that carries the album to heights Spoon hasn’t reached over the course of a full-length in years. I’m a Girls Can Tell fan through and through, but this is a fantastic statement — the most fun album they’ve ever made.

“The Underdog” has some production work from Jon Brion (though that doesn’t make it “this year’s ‘Float On.'” Christ.) and “The Ghost of You Lingers” is an experimental track with luminous vocal tracks and static ghosting across the speakers, but mostly, this sounds like Spoon. What could be better? Spoon sounding like Motown, as they do on “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb.” I love these guys. And I know I just said this about Boxer, but it’s hard not to start wondering if this is the album of the year…

Spoon – “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb”: (removed by request)
Spoon – “The Underdog”: mp3

[Tracklist and album art after the jump!]