Jeff McCord on the month’s new releases
Spoon
Merge
Most writers strive to pare their work down to the bare essentials, to speak with a voice both clear and concise. Spoon has the same approach to its music. Rarely has a group been so devoid of superfluous licks. For its fifth album, Gimme Fiction (Merge), the Austin band plays it a bit funkier, darker, and louder, while vocalist and songwriter Britt Daniel, with his strange, clipped-off singing style that almost sounds like an accent, even finds his falsetto. The group delivers another set of its usual peerless pop-rock nirvana with “Sister Jack,” “I Turn My Camera On,” and “The Delicate Place,” smart songs played even smarter. Instead of building on its successes with more-grandiose ambitions, Spoon actually seems to rethink and scale back for each album. It’s a much better band for it.
Willie Nelson
Lost Highway
Just fourteen days after the December 26 tsunami struck South Asia, a gargantuan benefit concert was staged in Austin. Its headliner, Willie Nelson, was among those instrumental in pulling the event together so quickly, so it’s no surprise that Willie’s label has also moved at light speed to release a live benefit CD. Songs for Tsunami Relief: Austin to South Asia (Lost Highway), whose liner notes were written by TEXAS MONTHLY senior editor Michael Hall, thrives on the nervous adrenaline of a rushed-to-the-stage event. Alejandro Escovedo leads a blistering set, and Joe Ely, joined by his reunited eighties band, rocks harder than he has in years. Natalie Maines turns up twice, with Patty Griffin and again with Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis. And though Willie’s set list could be carbon-dated, even he pulls off surprises, including a sublime duet with Griffin.
The Mars Volta
GSL
On both of its albums, The Mars Volta—El Paso natives and former At the Drive-In bandmates Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala—has trod the well-worn path of concept albums and rock opera. But if you’re picturing sequined capes and rotating stages, think again. In Frances the Mute (GSL), the pair have crafted an album that transcends prog-rock cliché. Supposedly based on a diary found by their late bandmate Jeremy Ward, the melancholy Frances has all but indecipherable lyrics that career from English to Spanish. While screeching guitars and John Bonham–like drums give way to seductive Latin rhythms and weird electronic interludes, singer Bixler-Zavala screams like a man possessed. A few spins later, you feel exactly the same way.
