Stream: Spoon, ‘No Bullets Spent’

Kevin Bronson on June 19th, 2019

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In an era of roll-your-own playlists via streaming services, the “greatest hits” album is a rather quaint notion. And if there’s one thing Spoon has not been over their nine-album, quarter-century career, it’s quaint.

But here it is: “Everything Hits at Once: The Best of Spoon,” a 13-track compilation arriving July 26 on Matador Records. As is often the case with such collections, “Everything” compiles 12 tracks from the vaults and tacks on one new song, “No Bullets Spent,” a taut rock-noir jam, the Austin-bred band’s first new music since their 2017 album “Hot Thoughts.”

Speaking of hot thoughts, here’s main man Britt Daniel’s best take on the best-of:

“The idea of doing a best-of came to us a couple times,” he says. “First I wasn’t sure how I felt about it but at some point I remembered that when I got my first Cure record it was ‘Standing on a Beach.’ When I got my first New Order record, it was ‘Substance.’ That was how I met those bands, and I moved backwards from there but I still listen to those comps. I love a greatest hits LP when it’s done well. It can be a thing unto itself.

“It’s a small collection trying to cover a lot of years, but I hope it does what ‘The Singles’ record by the Pretenders or ‘Hot Rocks’ [by the Rolling Stones] did for me — cover a lot of ground and then if you want to find out more, you can find out more.”

Yes, he adds, it was not easy distilling the band’s history into a dozen songs. “Honestly, it was a struggle,” he says. “I was listening to the old records and jotting down the songs — if you wanna turn the volume up, that’s a good sign. The list really got whittled down, so these are the best. ‘I Summon You’ was never a huge song, wasn’t for the radio, but it had to be on there. It’s one of the best things we’ve done. I wanted to represent ‘Transference,’ even though it’s not really a ‘hit’ type of album — ‘Got Nuffin’ was the closest thing. It did get to a point where I started feeling like, ‘We gotta represent this album in some way, we’ve gotta represent this change in some way.’ ‘Everything Hits at Once’ was a turning point for us — a minimal new wave soul type of rock song.”

Of course, obsessives (ahem) will wonder about the omission of their favorites … “The Beast and the Dragon, Adored” … or “Jonathon Fisk” … or “Fitted Shirt.” But as Daniel points out, “Everything” is not for them. Gift it to a 17-year-old.

||| Stream: “No Bullets Spent”