Spoon: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

After a rocky start – two so-so records followed by a major-label dumping – Spoon have been on a modest roll for the past half decade, turning out three good-to-great albums between '01 and '05 that dramatically beefed up their fan base. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga might be Spoon's commercial breakthrough, doing for them what Good News did for Modest Mouse, but for certain it's one of the Austin, Texas, trio's finest records. It sounds like Spoon: spiky, painstakingly detailed songs that deliver indie-pop payloads in less than four minutes, with minor frills like Motown bass lines, barrelhouse piano and streamlined dance grooves. Britt Daniel employs his soulful, sandpaper-rough croon and jagged little hooks like a man on a mission, and you'll be glad to have killer cuts like sweet, funk-pumped "Finer Feelings" or the horn-laden sing-along "The Underdog" bouncing around your head. Spoon probably won't change your life. But when the songs are this good, you can be glad they exist.