Lucifer on the Sofa continues Spoon’s winning streak, and includes both the softest and the hardest the band has ever rocked.
Spoon is not a band that releases bad albums. Their albums range from “good” to “excellent.” This has the unfortunate side effect of making it easy to take the band’s music for granted. The words “consistent” and “no-frills” are almost guaranteed to appear in commentary about them, and are honestly quite accurate. They don’t use any unusual instruments, they haven’t switched genres away from fairly standard rock, and they’ve avoided undue media attention. Since the mid-90s, Spoon has just been working relatively quietly to make great rock music. They’re kind of like the anti-Weezer in this regard.
Lucifer on the Sofa continues Spoon’s winning streak, and includes both the softest and the hardest the band has ever rocked. The band’s co-founders, singer/guitarist Brett Daniel and drummer Jim Eno, have been working together for almost three decades now, and it’s pretty impressive that they’ve been able to avoid serious missteps while keeping things fresh.
The album opens with its two heaviest tracks. “Held” is apparently a cover of a song by singer-songwriter Bill Callahan, who records under the name “Smog.” Spoon’s version may have the same lyrics and the same guitar riff notes, but it’s otherwise much louder, grittier, and better produced. “The Hardest Cut” has both a muted, staccato rhythm guitar and a twangy lead, but its real moment to shine comes when Daniel sings “here it is the hardest cut” and some of the heaviest, most distorted chords the band have ever played ring out. There’s also a pretty great (albeit brief) solo towards the end. Both tracks are sure to elicit comparisons to the Black Keys for their blues rock feel, and “The Hardest Cut” in particular reminded me of their album “Let’s Rock.” For Spoon, this is a new style, and one that they handle exceptionally well.
At the same time, Lucifer on the Sofa also seems keen on showing us a quieter, more tender side of Spoon, which isn’t as enticing. “Astral Jacket” is the mildest track the band have ever done, utilizing acoustic guitar, gentle drums, and a series of synthesized orchestral instruments. I applaud Spoon for their ambition to travel outside their comfort zone here, but it really falls flat. “My Babe” opens softly with acoustic guitar and piano, and you’ll breathe a sigh of relief as drums, then electric guitars enter to make it into a real rock song. Even with this transformation, it doesn’t really resonate. Spoon’s 2014 album They Want My Soul showed that they can do a great dialed-back, ethereal track with “Inside Out,” and these tracks from Lucifer on the Sofa pale in comparison.
The remainder of the album is less based in extremes, relying on the band’s tried-and-true rock cred. After releasing the occasionally-electronic Hot Thoughts in 2017, the band wanted to make a more “earthy” album inspired by classic rock. “The Devil & Mister Jones” has a 70s rock feel, with jazzy, drawn-out guitar lines and the occasional flourishes of horns. I think it edges out that one Counting Crows hit from the 90s for the best “Mr. Jones” song. The opening piano notes of “On the Radio” make it immediately recognizable as a Spoon track, in the vein of “The Way We Get By” from 2002’s Kill the Moonlight. Even though it sounds like it could have come from any number of past Spoon albums, it’s still pretty good. Eno does a fantastic job with the drumming on “Wild,” while the interplay of the guitar and the piano on “Satellite” makes it one of the band’s most grandiose and captivating songs.
I’ll admit that the albums that got me into Spoon, 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and 2010’s Transference, still hold a special place in my heart, and Lucifer on the Sofa doesn’t overtake them. It’s a good album for sure, and does contain some surprises. There are no overt curveballs like “Pink Up” or “Us” from Hot Thoughts, but taking steps to both amp things up and tone things down within the same album isn’t something the band has really done before. It succeeds as a “return to their roots” album, and shows why Spoon has been such a reliable standby all these years.
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