Again with the Fiction

Due to popular dissent, I gave Spoon's Gimme Fiction a more dedicated listen. My initial response to the album was "It's good, but boring in spots." I now have a higher opinion of it, but I'm still not getting what the fuss is all about. It's a quality album, certain to make my year-end top-40, but there are too many dud tracks for me to really get into it. Are all you fans really playing this start-to-finish everytime?

My skippers: "Two Sides," "The Delicate Place," and "Was It You". The ones that really stick with me as standouts: "Beast...Dragon," "I Turn My Camera On," and "Mathematical Mind" (which was awesome live).

I can't stand by my earlier thoughts of boringness, though. There's a low level intensity that grinds throughout the album, and Gimme Fiction as you'd expect from Spoon, shows a great deal of craft (one of my favorite moments is the way the piano plays on that chord change at the beginning of "Beast" -- it comes out of nowhere but sounds perfect).

So give one to the Spoon-ers in that my opinion of the album has gone up (even if I stick with my somewhat-flippant 3.5/5 rating). I'd rank this one below Kill the Moonlight but above Girls Can Tell.