What a difference a year makes. The last time Spoon was in town, the Austin, Texas band was previewing songs from its yet-to-be-released album They Want My Soul at the poorly attended CBCMusic.ca Festival at Deer Lake Park hosted by none other than Jian Ghomeshi.
Sunday’s sold-out show at Stanley Park’s Malkin Bowl was far more of a love-in, with the band playing a wide-ranging set to an appreciative crowd who was already in a lather over openers Future Islands. Or more precisely, frontman Samuel T. Herring, who looked like Marlon Brando performing Hamlet’s Yorick monologue and had the audience screaming with every gyration, Russian kick, chest pound, growl and facial contortion. And while the band’s legendary performance on a certain late night talk show last year may be responsible for much of Future Islands’ growing fan base, at least one woman in the crowd wore a T-shirt proudly declaring “I Loved Them Before Letterman.”
Speaking of indie cred. Props to the first band of the night, fellow Austin residents Sweet Spirit, who threw in an amped cover of Spoon’s “Paper Tiger” to spice up its already frenetic set.
By contrast, the evening’s headliner proved once again to be masters of the slow build. Kicking things off with They Want My Soul opener “The Rent I Pay,” Spoon weaved seamlessly through its surprisingly deep catalogue with songs such as “Don’t You Evah,” “Mathematical Mind,” “The Beast and Dragon Adored,” “Don’t Make Me a Target” and “I Turn My Camera On.”
Having left Merge Records and returned to the land of major labels with its latest, the songs off They Want My Soul are noticeably slicker, and offer singer Britt Daniel a chance to put his guitar down and act the frontman, though obviously not as theatrically as his Future Islands cohort. A particular highlight was the woozy “Inside Out.”
It wasn’t all perfect, mind you. “Underdog” off 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga sounded awkward and empty without the horn section so prominent on the recording, and the piano on “The Way We Get By” was nearly inaudible. Fans wanting to hear the peppy title track from They Want My Soul and the even more rocking song it references (“Jonathan Fisk”) would also be disappointed. But Spoon made up for it with an inspired cover of the Cramps’ “TV Set,” a pulsating “Small Stakes,” the sweetly romantic “Anything You Want” from 2001’s Girls Can Tell and show closer “Got Nuffin” with Daniel singing, “When I'm with you, all my brothers, I feel like a king.” And why shouldn’t he? He’s got a sold-out audience in the palm of his hand, his band has never sounded better, and Jian Ghomeshi is thousands of miles away, probably listening to old Moxy Fruvous records in his mom’s basement.
