Music Monday: Spoon’s Indie Formula

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Spoon
Transference
Merge Records

It’s easy to see why hipsters love Spoon. Their music is catchy, but not so much that it’s gone mainstream. Their lyrics are clever. Their videos feature dancing robots and drag nuns. And their name just sounds cool.

On Spoon’s latest album, which comes out this week, the band delivers what is expected, with a collection of songs that’s both tuneful and just irreverent enough. The opening track, “Before Destruction,” sets the tone with a segue from what sounds like a scratchy demo into a slick synthetic rush. On “Goodnight Laura,” the music is sweet but the lyrics melancholy: And you close your eyes and slow yourself and let the worry leave you  / Don’t you know love, you’re all right.

At the same time, Spoon often employs its accessible-yet-edgy style in a predictable way—I often found it hard to distinguish between songs, and between this collection and the band’s past hits. With few exceptions, the formula is roughly this: uptempo beat + jaunty guitar hooks + bluesy keys + fun, quirky melodies. Not a bad combination, but it can feel a little staid.

Where they do flirt with experimentation, like with the spacey instrumentals in “Who Makes Your Money,” it’s refreshing. Maybe the old adage If it ain’t broke… is working for them, but after more than 15 years wooing the indie masses with a winning formula, it may be time for Spoon to mess with it a bit.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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