Spoon

The Austin, Texas-based Spoon began as an indie rock band heavily influenced by the jarring melodic dissonance and loud-soft dynamics of the Pixies, but by the early 2000s had developed its own sound and style owing as much to angular British punk-era bands like Wire and Gang of Four as to the music of the Nineties alternative boom. The band is known as much for its heroic perseverance in the face of major-label abandonment when it became a mainstream success after moving back to an independent record label.

Singer, guitarist and primary songwriter Britt Daniel formed Spoon — named for a song by the German experimental band Can — in 1993 along with drummer Jim Eno, guitarist Greg Wilson and bassist Andy McGuire. The following year, the band released a seven-inch EP, Nafarious, on the small indie label Fluffer Records. Spoon caught the attention of the larger indie label Matador Records, on which the band released its first full-length disc, Telephono, in 1996. The album was hailed by critics and fans of indie rock, and the band soon found itself being courted by the major label Elektra Records. The group’s 1998 Elektra debut, A Series of Sneaks, was an artistic leap for the band and that album, too, was championed by critics. But Sneaks didn’t sell as quickly as Elektra wanted, and the label abandoned Spoon just four months after the album’s release. Disheartened by Elektra executives Ron Laffitte, who had signed the band, and CEO Sylvia Rhone, Spoon wrote two songs questioning their ethics: “The Agony of Laffitte” and “Laffitte Don’t Fail Me Now.”

Spoon’s major-label woes didn’t stop Daniel and company from continuing to write and record, and in 2001 the band signed with North Carolina indie label Merge Records. Spoon’s first Merge album, Girls Can Tell (Number 46 Top Independent Albums, 2001), and its follow-up, Kill the Moonlight (Number 23 Top Independent Albums, 2002), both outsold the band’s previous two discs. When one of Moonlight’s tracks, “The Way We Get By,” appeared in the popular teen TV show The O.C., Spoon got a measure of mainstream attention. Gimme Fiction (Number 44 pop, 2005), the group’s highly anticipated follow-up, was three years in the making and wound up selling 160,000 copies. The next year, Daniel co-wrote the soundtrack for the Will Ferrell comedy Stranger than Fiction. Also that year, Merge reissued the group’s first album together with its 1997 EP, Soft Effects. When Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (Number Ten pop, 2007) came out to raves, Spoon went on the late-night TV circuit, including an appearance on Saturday Night Live where they performed the single “The Underdog” (Number 26 Modern Rock, 2007) and “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb.” A second single, “Don’t You Evah,” reached Number 33 on the Modern Rock chart in 2008.