Jim Connelly

Certain Songs #2433: Spoon – “The Beast and Dragon, Adored”

August 28, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Gimme Fiction
Year: 2005

. . .

After the critical if not commercial success of Kill The Moonlight, Spoon went back to the drawing board, and Britt Daniel and Jim Eno basically recorded nearly all of the follow-up, 2005’s Gimme Fiction by themselves. And with Eno limiting himself to the drums, Gimme Fiction is probably as close to a Britt Daniel solo album as we are going to get.

But not really, as Eno’s drums are as integral to Spoon as anything, especially on the opening track, “The Beast and Dragon, Adored.”

Certain Songs #2432: Spoon – “Don’t Let It Get You Down”

August 27, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Kill The Moonlight
Year: 2002

. . .

Despite — or maybe because of — the self-conscious keyboard-driven minimalism the dominated Kill The Moonlight, there were quite a few songs that were incredibly atmospheric, like the buzzing opener “Small Stakes” and the swirling closer, “Vittorio E.” Smack dab in the middle was “Don’t Let It Get You Down,” a fantastic example of what Britt Daniel calls his mathematical mind.

Actually, I also just realized that for each of Spoon’s early 2000s albums, I’m writing about a propulsive song and and arty song. So far, “Take The Fifth” and “The Way We Get By” are the propulsive songs, and “The Fitted Shirt” and today’s “Don’t Let It Get You Down” are the arty ones. And — SPOILER ALERT! — this will carry over to the two Gimme Fiction songs I’m writing about in the next couple of days, though it totally breaks down when I get to my favorite Spoon album, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.

Certain Songs #2431: Spoon – “The Way We Get By”

August 26, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Kill The Moonlight
Year: 2002

. . .

Because it just celebrated its 20th anniversary and is considered by many to be Spoon’s best album — a take I respectfully disagree with — 2002’s Kill The Moonlight has been in the zeitgeist recently, no doubt causing a bit of “holy shit, I’m getting old!” angst in Millennials for whom it was a key text. (And as somebody who just bought the 40th anniversary reissue of Chronic Town, just you wait.)

Anyways, coming just a year after Girls Can Tell — the fastest between-album turnaround Britt Daniel will ever accomplish — Kill The Moonlight took the minimalist tendencies found on that record and turned them up to 10, or down to 1, as the case may be.

Certain Songs #2430: Spoon – “Take The Fifth”

August 25, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Girls Can Tell
Year: 2001

. . .

Britt Daniel has said that one of the key influences for Girls Can Tell was Elvis Costello’s Get Happy!! — still a top five EC album for me — and nowhere was that influence more pronounced than on my favorite track on record, “Take The Fifth,” which is also a prime example of what my favorite Spoon songs would be moving forward.

Certain Songs #2429: Spoon – “The Fitted Shirt”

August 24, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Girls Can Tell
Year: 2001

. . .

While Spoon released a couple of albums in the 1990s — 1996’s indie Telephono and 1998’s major-label debut (and major-label exit) A Series of Sneaks — they didn’t really cross my radar at the time, and when I went back after getting into them, nothing jumped out at me.

However, starting with 2001’s Girls Can Tell, Spoon utterly killed it for the next decade, releasing five good-to-great records, my favorite songs from which will be dominating this column for the next week and a half or so. According to songwriter & frontman Britt Daniel, Girls Can Tell was a conscious departure from what they did in the 1990s, and on the best songs, highlighted drummer Jim Eno, who is an absolute monster.

Certain Songs #2428: Split Enz – “Hello Sandy Allen”

August 23, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Time and Tide
Year: 1982

. . .

While “I Got You” was their biggest and most enduring song, the Split Enz song that I well and truly loved the most was 1982’s much-more-obscure “Hello Sandy Allen,” which was based upon a true story. In 1981, Split Enz was a guest on Tom Synder’s Tomorrow show — Snyder had a shit-ton of punk and new wave artists on in those years — and the titular Sandy Allen was also a guest.

Neil Finn was so taken with Sandy Allen, he wrote a song about her. And it goes a little something like this:

Certain Songs #2427: Split Enz – “I Got You”

August 22, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: True Colours
Year: 1980

. . .

So here’s a thing I didn’t know until just a few minutes ago: True Colours wasn’t New Zealanders Split Enz’s debut album, but rather their fifth album. I have no idea what their music sounded like in the mid-1970s, but looking at the album covers (and given that Phil Manzanera produced one of their records) and reading the descriptions on the AllMusic and Trouser Press websites, I gather they were in the Roxy Music / Genesis art rock camp.

Certain Songs #2426: Spiritualized – “The Mainline Song”

August 20, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Everything Was Beautiful
Year: 2022

. . .

And so just a few months ago, Spiritualized put out their ninth studio album, Everything Was Beautiful, and while it’s always a bit harder to determine instant favorites than it is to have them grow on you over time, sometimes, of course, songs just jump out at you. Like in the case of “The Mainline Song,” the soaring highlight of Everything Was Beautiful.

So here’s a thing: for nearly 20 years now, I don’t really process new music as individual albums, but rather as a big, ever-changing playlist I call “House Mix.” And so when I first heard gorgeous, soaring “ooooooooooh” vocals that dominated the first few minutes of “The Mainline Song,” my first thought was “wow, the Arcade Fire really are back!!”

Certain Songs #2425: Spiritualized – “Hey Jane”

August 19, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sweet Heart Sweet Light
Year: 2012

. . .

And so it went: every few years Spiritualized would put out a new album, and in the cases of 2003’s Amazing Grace and 2008’s Songs in A&E, they were good records without a song that utterly killed me.

That all changed when I heard the first single from 2012’s Sweet Heart Sweet Light, the utterly infectious “Hey Jane,” which had a high degree of difficulty — your instantly competing with the other great “Jane” songs, like future Certain Song “Sweet Jane” and “Jane Says,’ both of which are referenced in the lyrics.

Certain Songs #2424: Spiritualized – “The Twelve Steps”

August 18, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Let it Come Down
Year: 2001

. . .

It was, of course, inevitable that Jason Pierce would follow-up the already huge-sounding Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space and the subsequent live album Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997 by going even bigger. And so, it took four years and 115 musicians to put together the follow-up, 2001’s More Songs About Jesus And Drugs.

Oh wait, the Home Office is telling me that that album is called Let it Come Down. Sure, but I’ve been waiting to make that joke for 20 years, and sure as shit wasn’t gonna pass it up.