Everything We Know about Spoon’s New Album So Far
Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Music Features Spoon
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It seems we have indeed talked Spoon into it, as the band have teased their as-of-yet-unannounced return to the studio. With the production of their next album seemingly in motion, the Texas indie-rockers will be following up their most rhythmic and sonic album in their 25-year history, 2017’s Hot Thoughts, one of Paste’s top albums of that year. Here’s everything we know about their forthcoming tenth studio album so far.
What exactly are they working on?
Spoon posted an 18-second clip to their Twitter this week, as well as an additional clip of the band’s multi-instrumentalist Alex Fischel playing the wooden fish on their Instagram story, revealing that they are officially back in the studio and up to something new.
— SPOON (@spoontheband) January 29, 2019
Before their performance at last year’s All Points East festival, the band also spoke briefly with U.K. music publication NME about where they are in the process of recording their “earthy” next album. As of July, when the interview was conducted, frontman Britt Daniel said they had officially worked out one song that they’d been working on for some time, which held the tentative title “Satellite.”
What have they been up to since Hot Thoughts?
One of the last times we heard from the Austin natives was during a campaign rally for Texas senate hopeful Beto O’Rourke in October 2018. The band took on a cover of The Clash’s “Clampdown,” dedicated to the punk-rock reference O’Rourke made in a debate with his Republican counterpart, Ted Cruz.
No strangers to the road, Spoon had also followed up the release of Hot Thoughts with an extensive headlining, worldwide tour, various other political benefit shows and a hefty dose of festival dates, as well as a co-headlining tour alongside Grizzly Bear.
What will it sound like?
In the aforementioned NME interview, Daniel spoke about how the band will be leaving the “futuristic” era of Hot Thoughts behind for a more traditionally rock-sounding record.
Daniel said, “I want to make a rock ‘n’ roll record. We always said this last record [Hot Thoughts] was a rock ‘n’ roll record that didn’t have a lot of guitars on it. Maybe the next one will.”
And their recent guitar-forward clip on Twitter holds up to that claim. The 18 seconds’ worth of new sound feels like a return to their pre-Hot Thoughts form, as daunting as that claim is with their continuously evolving back-catalog.
The left-leaning activists spoke candidly about how the current U.S. administration is affecting their process, as well. Daniel told NME of the new album’s lyrical drive:
The first song we’ve been working on is personal, but we haven’t really sat down and written a batch of songs yet. It is a dark time, especially when you spend as much time in the States as we do. For a while I felt like, “This is chaos and there’s no way that it can last very long and everybody can see through this,” but for the last couple of months it’s felt like that motherfucker [Donald Trump] is winning.
When is it coming out?
There is currently no telling when we’ll see an official announcement from Spoon, but their new social media teasers make us hopeful for a more telling update soon to come.
Watch this space for continued updates, and listen to the band’s 2008 Daytrotter performance in the meantime. You can revisit our ranking of Spoon’s discography so far right here.