as usual, Ga Ga Ga is dope

I don't know why I don't trust Spoon as easily as Mates Of State. Yes I do - poppy-ass keyboards and drums are hard to fuck up and easy to make great songs out of, so I preordered Bring It Back as soon as that shit was on the market. There are a select few groups whose records I will preorder, and I would've done it for Spoon's Gimme Fiction in 2004 except that I was on a school trip to NYC on the day it dropped, and I had the pleasure of buying it at Virgin in Times Square that night. Ani DiFranco, I think, screwed it up for me, because when I preordered Reprieve last year I wasn't ready for the big old alt-concepty kind of dark, dank Cask of Amontillado French, uh, wine storage cellar or what the fuck ever sound, and I still haven't listened to more than "Hypnotized" and "Decree". Actually I remember telling someone, "I'm not feeling that bleak right now." And the truth is that I don't want to get into that mood, and when I'm in it, I really don't want an instigator.

And I'm one of the folks who don't believe in "guilty pleasures" - if you like it and you think it's good, then you like it, you think it's good - so no one can ever make me feel bad for riding the Ani train for soooo damn long. You shouldn't be wasting your time trying to make people feel bad for the music they listen to in the first damn place.

Anyway, impulsively I started to preorder Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga but I stopped. I had the fifteen bucks or whatever, but I didn't want to get stuck with a piece of shit on my hands. And I'll comfortably call Spoon my favo(u?)rite band. I've been on that wagon since I was about 14 and at the end of my days, I'll take alternative/indie/rock over hip-hop, over funk, over "trip-hop" or whatever that's become, over trance, over Arabic pop and over Nina Simone - call me Caucasian, because I am - but I have this bratty kind of love-and-hate thing where I hate to listen to them for months, then I start again and it's like how did I live? Like a savage?

Ga Ga Ga, I streamed it from the free site Merge set up I think (I'm too lazy to get a link, boo) but I kind of drifted in and out of it. It sounded pre-Fiction, which shocked and awed me, but I've heard "Don't You Evah", "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb" (is it me or are these titles looking a little fucking Fall Out Boy, except they're making it indie-retro-cool) (and I do listen to FOB) and "Black Like Me" and I'm won. I warmed up to "The Underdog" in a big way. I think I'm going to pick the record up tonight and we're gonna get some alone time.