Spoon’s last appearance in Tampa found Britt Daniel joining the crowd gathered in front of Gasparilla Music Festival’s mainstage before his band’s own set. Onstage was Los Angeles indie-rock band Warpaint, working through a smouldering performance underneath moody skies that would eventually unleash some rain. It was a little surreal to be standing stage right with the towering Spoon frontman, who was awash in the music happening in front of him. After the sun completed its dip behind the minarets of the University of Tampa, Daniel’s band ended up playing one of the festival’s all-time best sets as neon lights reflected off the puddles that had formed at the front of the stage.
“I do remember the festival in Tampa — that was a fun one. I remember feeling like whoever put it together just did a great job with the lineup,” Daniel, 48, told CL. “It wasn’t too big, it was a nice, little, comfortable, great environment.”
In some ways, that sentiment — nice, comfortable, great — sums up how Spoon has carved out a sterling reputation during the course of a 23-year career that’s seen the Austin, Texas-based outfit release nine albums without a single dud. Spoon is consistent, and that’s not to say that the band is boring either. In fact, the band may have written too many outstanding songs, which is a problem when a frontman is tasked with deciding on a tracklist for an introductory best-of compilation album.
“First I wasn’t sure how I felt about it but at some point I remembered that when I got my first Cure record it was Standing on a Beach. When I got my first New Order record, it was Substance,” Daniel said in a release accompanying Everything Hits At Once: The Best of Spoon (released in July via Matador). Those albums are how Daniel met those legendary bands, and they provided him with a roadmap that allowed him to move backwards and do a deeper dive into the minds and processes of Robert Smith and the late Ian Curtis.
“[Our greatest hits album is] a small collection trying to cover a lot of years, but I hope it does what The Singles record by the Pretenders or Hot Rocks [by the Rolling Stones] did for me — cover a lot of ground and then if you want to find out more, you can find out more,” Daniel added. “I love a greatest hits LP when it’s done well. It can be a thing unto itself.”
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Calling Everything Hits At Once a “thing” is a bit of an understatement. Daniel listened to every song and every record and EP Spoon put out; quite often, the works were albums he hadn’t listened to front-to-back in years. The first list of songs Daniel gathered would’ve filled three albums, but he whittled those 30-40 tracks down to the 11 originals that appear alongside a cover of Natural History’s “Don’t You Evah” (a huge hit from Spoon’s 2007 album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga) and a new song, “No Bullets Spent,” that’s both unabashedly Spoon (cinematic guitar, staccato rhythms) and a vehicle for something uncharacteristic: two guitar solos from Daniel, who now has his own signature Telecaster Thinline.
“I don’t know what happened. It just started making sense to play some guitar solos for the first time. It fit with the song. I’m having more fun with the instrument,” Daniel told CL. “Bullets,” which isn’t political in any way, is also a glimpse into a forthcoming album that Daniel and Spoon multi-instrumentalist Alex Fischel have been working on in Los Angeles.
“We’re pretty far on five songs, and I’ve got a bunch more that I’m working on,” Daniel said. “As soon as the tour is done, I’m going to need to take a little time to do a little more songwriting to up the record for the end of the year.”
But don’t expect to hear any of Spoon’s 10th album when the band (along with New York’s Sunflower Bean) plays opener on a big summer tour co-headlined by Beck and Cage the Elephant. Daniel knows that there are people who go to shows and hear the lyrics first, but he’s someone who’s more keen to initially absorb chords and melodies.
“Especially in clubs, I might not know a single word that person said all night, but it doesn’t matter. I still know that I love the songs because of that melodic information,” Daniel said, adding that watching the Purple One was the only time he remembers being reduced to tears. “When you’re watching Prince it’s almost like watching God’s love. It’s an amazing, otherworldly experience. I feel like he was probably feeling that, too.”
Spoon played to over 5,000 people at that Gasparilla Music Festival set, and a full house at MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre next Thursday would potentially put the band in front of at least 19,000 fans. Daniel, however, tempers the expectations.
“We’re playing such short sets, and a lot of people don’t know us on this one,” he said. “So we’re playing the best known songs.”
But as the band’s new compilation proves, every spoonful of Daniels & co. just leaves fans wanting another taste.
Read our full Q&A.
Beck w/Cage the Elephant/Spoon/Sunflower Bean Thurs. Aug. 29, 6 p.m. $29.50 & up. MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre, 4802 U.S. Hwy 301 N., Tampa. livenation.com.
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This article appears in Aug 22-29, 2019.