#8 Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

After a plodding grassroots effort to spread their art-punk staccato since the late ’90s, Spoon are still not only tirelessly innovative with an uncanny ability to perpetually unearth interesting ways to expand their singularly addictive sound, album upon album, but their determination has paid off in large dividends with an ever-expanding fanbase and, finally, an album that bled over into mainstream with their sixth LP Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. A purely underground pet since their inception in Austin when they they were dumped by Elektra records before the release of A Series of Sneaks in ‘98, Spoon are the self-made result of bootstrap efforts ever since to (like Natalie Maines) take the long way around to their fame. It’s not that Ga Ga is conventional by any stretch: people just finally caught on, gushing its praises as if to make up for lost time, wishing they’d been with the in-crowd all along. For those who’ve been following Brit Daniel and bros over the years, though – those who owned a $50 copy of debut Telephono before its reissue in ‘06, or caught them live in Memphis danks where they drew but a humble crowd and still performed like the sweaty rock stars they are – Ga Ga is just another masterpiece. Doyens at galvanizing such influential giants as Gang of Four or Wire with the rascally recklessness of Pavement, Spoon craft taut pop that often seems to run in place – a number of their songs take only a brief intermission to climax before subsiding back to their natural rhythm – but cover more territory in minutes than other bands often spend careers trying to mine. For example, opener “Don’t Make Me A Target” marries itself to a flinty, duplicating guitar throb that presses together so many variations on its theme that its peak emerges, not from an all-relieving break in melody, but from its own tightly wound, unrelenting pulse. From there, “The Ghost of You Lingers” plunges into an ethereal piano cadence, eerily similar to LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends,” but surrounded by swirling lryical fragments that echo cryptically to its sudden finish, only to emerge from the ether with the exuberant “You Got Yr Cherry Bomb,” accompanied by the same jaunty brass that propels “The Underdog,” featuring the always welcome Jon Brion. One distinct aspect of Ga Ga that plays a more vital role than previous albums had allowed are its overdub futzes, which producer Jim Eno loops in with studio talk-back on “Don’t You Evah” and fade-outs to the open-air party grounds of a Brussels fair before resuming business as usual on “Finer Feelings.” Though it may not be their finest work – that honor probably belongs to ’05’s Gimme Fiction – Spoon hit a long-awaited nerve with audiences this time around, and, honestly, it’s about damn time.