The basement is hot. Britt Daniel and Alex Fischel have had a long day. They’re playing to around 30 people who haven’t even paid to be there. And yet the Spoon duo are giving it their all.
But that’s always been the band’s approach to live performance: crank up the intensity of their studio recordings so they sound more visceral, more direct, more emotional.
Spoon: Lucifer On The Sofa
The opening 20 seconds of Spoon’s tenth album tell you all you need to know. In-studio banter and the sound of instruments being tuned are universal shorthand for “this music was recorded by people playing in a room together”. And that’s exactly the spirit that the instantly compelling Lucifer On The Sofa embraces.
It’s midway through Spoon’s set at Forum Kentish Town. A fired-up Britt Daniel has just led the band, backlit in orange, through a ferociously jubilant ‘Do You’. Multi-instrumentalist Alex Fischel begins a moody keyboard piece that gradually swells to Sigur Ros levels of intensity.
Nils van der Linden