Spoon: Gimme Fiction [MATADOR]

Why you'll love it

This Matador reissue was newly recut from the original masters and comes in a gatefold jacket with a printed inner sleeve of credits and lyrics. Gimme Fiction debuted at No. 44 on the Billboard 200 and has sold more than 160,000 copies.

This edition

• Recut from the original masters
• Gatefold jacket
• Printed inner sleeve with lyrics

About the album

Spoon have always made a little go a long way, and on Gimme Fiction Britt Daniel and Jim Eno started letting the songs stretch out. Coming off Girls Can Tell and Kill the Moonlight, the Austin band had momentum and a growing audience, and they used it to make a darker, moodier record full of space and odd angles. Bassist Joshua Zarbo was still on board, and the band's lean, spacious rock and roll, part post-punk and part art rock, was getting sharper with every record.

"The Beast and Dragon, Adored" opens with a slow, piano-heavy swagger, "I Turn My Camera On" is a falsetto funk strut that went everywhere, and "My Mathematical Mind" and "Sister Jack" show off the band's knack for a hook that sounds simple until you try to play it. "I Summon You" is quietly one of their loveliest songs; Daniel was still pulling it out on Conan O'Brien's 2010 tour.

A few years later Metacritic named Spoon its top overall artist of the decade, a title that can't be framed but really ought to be.

Also at Kops: more Spoon on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Matador (cat# OLE1552LP), a reissue of the 2005 album.