On Hot Thoughts, Spoon’s distinctive charms are lacking
Grade: C+
Explaining Spoon’s rise to fame is easy if you break down its songwriting. On first listen—or the 10th, really—its material sounds simplistic because it’s exactly that. Learning Spoon songs isn’t difficult, but replicating Spoon songs is hard. The subtleties and delivery, like Britt Daniel’s hoarse scratch on the tail end of phrases or Rob Pope’s sharp end to his notes, brought about a fan base that’s always been well earned. But Hot Thoughts, the band’s ninth full-length, sounds like a Spoon impersonation. Layers of overthought production and tiny tricks that made the evolution of its songs such a feat in the pop division of indie rock are difficult to dig out because they weren’t placed here to begin with.
That’s not to say Hot Thoughts is without its gems. Spoon revisits the chorus-free thread in Kill The Moonlight with “WhisperI’lllistentohearit,” a song that chases its own tail in a dizzying display of synth and shakers, and the title track is undeniably one of the band’s catchiest singles. When Spoon goes slow, like on piano ballad “I Ain’t The One,” it reminds listeners of its depth. Then it breaks out a guitar solo on par with Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga’s with “Do I Have To Talk You Into It.” It’s in these flashes that Spoon shines in the way it always has. But when Hot Thoughts reaches its middle section, the album loses steam.
On paper, the disco-tinged rock of “First Caress” should work given Spoon’s dependence on rubbery bass, but its chorus offers little payoff. Six-minute track “Pink Up” goes for the opposite: a quiet, vibraphone-dotted number that creates ample room for reflection, but where Daniel wants you to look is unclear. Even “Tear It Down” has all the trappings of a catchy Spoon song, complete with “na na’s” and clean drum fills, but its hook never solidifies.
Spoon is a master of hooky songwriting, but Hot Thoughts seems so bent on undermining it that the band undersells itself. Maybe Hot Thoughts is an apt title after all—it’s got great ideas, but the execution is lacking.
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Real Estate’s In Mind is an incremental, if overly languid, step forward
Grade: C
Band chemistry is an imperfect science. Take the nostalgic jangle-pop act Real Estate. Lead guitarist Matt Mondanile left the group in 2015, but the band subsequently gained two permanent members: guitarist Julian Lynch and keyboardist Matt Kallman.
On In Mind, Real Estate’s fourth studio album, the new musicians’ influence is obvious. Lynch adds welcome psychedelic disturbance to the jammy “Serve The Song” and contributes to the Dead-like vibe of “Diamond Eyes.” Kallman, meanwhile, adds frosty new wave synths to the chiming “Darling” and prominent keyboard zaps and electric surges to the otherwise folk-leaning “Holding Pattern.”
Still, despite the added instrumental color and lineup reshuffling, In Mind suffers from the same kind of languorous, unmemorable songwriting that plagued Real Estate’s previous record, 2014’s Atlas. While pristine-sounding, the plodding “Time” and vaguely jazz-influenced “After The Moon” float in the ether, untethered from any sense of urgency. Martin Courtney’s vocals, though just as lush and inquisitive as ever, are equally unbothered, which further saps energy from the record.