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.
And while I seem to recall that there might have some grumbling that hotshot guitarist Daniel mostly eschewed the guitar on many of the songs, the results on something like “The Way We Get By” speak for themselves.
Opening with just Daniel’s vocal and piano — by Eggo Johanson, or so Wikipedia tells me — “The Way We Get By” is a stoner relationship fantasia.
We get high in backseats of cars
We break into mobile homes
We go to sleep to “Shake Appeal”
Never wake up on our own
And as the chorus starts, they’re by bassist Joshua Zarbo, as well as a tambourine & handclaps(!), and it’s so fucking catchy, you might not even notice Jim Eno’s drums haven’t yet kicked in.
And that’s the way we get by
It’s the way we get by
Aw, that’s the way we get by
It’s the way we get by
And in fact, when Eno’s drums finally kick in after the second chorus, it’s almost like a shock, as he almost fights against the momentum of the song, adding extra depth.
We found a new kind of dance in a magazine
Tried it out, it’s like nothing you ever seen
You sweet talk like a cop and you know it
You bought a new bag of pot, said, “Let’s make a new start”
And fact, all of that tension is what makes the final chorus such an up: Eno’s drums playing off of the piano, Daniel’s vocal, the handclaps, and of course the way he switches up the words at first.
And that’s the way to my heart
It’s the way to my heart
And that’s the way we get by
It’s the way we get by
And that’s the way we get by
It’s the way we get by, it’s the way
Well, that’s the way we get by
That’s the way we get by
After that, there’s a piano solo from Johanson, and one final verse and chorus before “The Way We Get By” comes crashing to its end, a masterclass in maximum minimalism.
“The Way We Get By” Official Music Video
“The Way We Get By” live a Primavera Sound, 2014
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