100 Shows of 2010 - #6: Spoon @ The National, 3/24/10

Somehow, I’m not really quite sure how it’s happened, I hadn’t ever managed to see Spoon live. Your guess is as good as mine. I’m sure either other things came up, I was out of town, or I missed out on tickets (or all of the above). Naturally, then, I wanted to right this terrible, terrible wrong against concert-going humanity. Finally, I can now say I’ve seen Spoon live. And all feels right with the world.

MINI RECAP: Spoon = Solid. Overall score: B.

Sadly, I missed all of The Strange Boys set and a great deal of the Deerhunter set, thanks to a little thing I like to call the Ticket Window Incident. It was a serious bummer to miss so much good music, so both bands if you’d be so kind to come back around this way soon, I’d be much obliged.

I must say, I think my expectations were a wee bit too high for Spoon. As in sky-high. Which really isn’t fair. And it’s not that the band wasn’t really, really good. It’s more that I wish my first Spoon experience wasn’t in a heavingly-packed National with so many people. I wish I had seen them way back when, ideally when they were touring Kill The Moonlight, my favorite Spoon record. Britt Daniel was as devastatingly handsome as I had hoped, and possibly even taller. The band sounded splendid as they steamrolled songs like “Someone Something,” “My Mathematical Mind,” a particularly saucy version of “Don’t You Evah,” “Everything Hits At Once,” “Don’t Make Me a Target,” “I Summon You,” “You Got Yr Cherry Bomb,” “I Turn My Camera On,” “Small Shapes,” and “Jonathon Fisk,” among other gems. They sounded lovely, and the crowd was really into them. Deservedly so. Like I said, it’s not that they weren’t terribly good, I just somehow wasn’t totally swept off my feet. But hey, sometimes I’m pretty dang picky. I think this will require further investigation on my part, so another Spoon show will definitely be in order.

But at least I’ve righted a wrong in terms of my concert-going, and that’s a very good thing indeed.

mp3: Vittorio E. (Spoon from Kill The Moonlight)