Don't Say A Word, The Last One's Still Stinging

It's hard to believe that there are only 10 days left in 2009. Wait... there are 10 albums left on my list... hmm...

NUMBER 10:

Spoon - Girls Can Tell / Kill The Moonlight

It was just way too tough to separate these two albums. Released back-to-back in 2001 and 2002, these are the albums that launched Spoon to critical acclaim. After having been unceremoniously dropped by Elektra Records the previous year, Spoon made the jump to indie juggernaut Merge. The Durham, NC label couldn't have been happier.

Tense, taut rhythms, sparse instrumentation, "just enough" production, and Britt Daniel's vocal delivery equal two of the best back to back albums you'll find. Girls Can Tell kicks off with "Everything Hits At Once" - check out the repeated and deceptively simple organ line that runs throughout the song and is parroted by a touch of xylophone. This song sets the mold for what makes Spoon great - they know that they don't need bells and whistles to make a song great. The album also contains one of Spoon's masterpieces - "The Fitted Shirt". A walking bass line, simple guitar fills, and the singer longing for a simpler time - "when we used to say ma'am and yes sir". Who ever said that a little nostalgia had no place in modern rock?

Kill The Moonlight isn't quite as polished and angular as Girls Can Tell. It's clearly more experimental and loose, but no less inventive. Take the opening track, "Small Stakes". In the hands of almost any other artist, it would fall into a classic verse-chorus-bridge pattern, but with Spoon, that big bridge never comes. The song is propelled forward by a driving fuzzed guitar line that, on first listen, seems like it should explode into a wall of sound. That it doesn't explains what sets it apart. "The Way We Get By"? A theme song for indie stoners everywhere. "Stay Don't Go" includes human beat-box throughout. "Jonathon Fisk" is the proto-punk anthem of the record and deserves to be heard at sporting events everywhere. The album closes with "Vittorio E", an acoustic ballad with beautiful background harmony.

As the decade progressed, Spoon pushed their sound to new directions (with the dark, but equally excellent Gimmie Fiction and the neo-soul workout of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga), and they continue to push the envelope to whichever direction suits them. January 2010 will bring us the release of Transference, Spoon's first entry into the next decade's best of list. If you haven't heard this band before, by all means, enjoy.

Girls Can Tell - "The Fitted Shirt"

Kill The Moonlight - "Jonathon Fisk"

Tomorrow, Number 9... Number 9... Number 9... (no, it's not a Beatles record)... be well...