Categories : Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 3 / 5 Reviewer: Nathan Atnikov |
After fifteen years in the biz, Spoon’s sixth studio album, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, was their shot at the mainstream. It was chock full of boogie-heavy beats and winking-at-the-camera sexiness. Critics adored it at first (cute!) but many self-corrected soon after (too cute!). Transference renews in the band their previous title of indie-rock stalwarts. Where Ga Ga was an exercise in outsized personality, Transference tends toward subtler studio trickery – different sounds and samples bubble up mid-song and then abruptly disappear. In other words, Spoon is back to pleasing themselves, others be damned.
But Spoon hasn’t dismissed groove altogether. ‘Written in Reverse,’ ‘Who Makes Your Money’ and ‘Got Nuffin’ still bring the indie funk. Asymmetrical guitar and warbling vocal effects serve to keep the album from getting stale, but feel overused at a certain point. It could be described as either a step backwards or a necessary self-correction, depending on your perspective. However you see it, Transference isn’t going to surprise any Spoon fans, which, seven albums deep, is kind of disappointing.
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