If you don’t know Spoon, you’ve probably still heard a handful of Spoon songs and, unknowingly, are a fan. The rock band from Texas has produced a steady flow of albums since 1993, including a handful of radio singles and major contributions to the Stranger than Fiction soundtrack, culminating (but hopefully not finishing) with their tenth studio album, Lucifer on the Sofa. I would’ve guessed Lucifer on the Sofa as a more likely Cake album title than a Spoon one, but considering the album was mostly conceived and recorded in and around COVID lockdowns, the title is apt in describing the set of ten songs’ lyrical and instrumental battle against one’s own domestic demons. With a stripped-down rock n’ roll sensibility, Spoon has delivered a live-esque studio album that plays like a group artistically re-coalescing together for a spontaneous living room concert, and we’re lucky enough to have a front-row sofa seat.
It starts with a cover of Smog’s 1999 single “Held”. Not so much a reimagining but a harder take on the drum-thumping classic. It’s with “The Hardest Cut” that the album really takes off, with lead man Britt Daniel getting globally conscious in the chorus, “It’s comin’ down, the hardest cut / World wars in your mind / Long day into night, the hardest cut / We live on a knife.” Yup, that’s the pandemic in a nutshell. Two songs later, in “Wild”, Daniel sings of worldly sorrows and the weight it carries, “And the world still so wild called to me / I was lost, I’d been kept on my knees,” but gets deeper into the belittling effect the world has had on him and his Austin hometown, “I looked full over all the lies and / Appealing to me advertising / And I was living tight every night.”
There’s also breathing room on Lucifer on the Sofa for tenderness. In “My Babe,” which Daniel fittingly claims was “written about my babe”, the band finds a welcoming melodic and tonal balance as the song transforms from a sentimental ballad to a foot-stomping banger. Romance reappears in “Satellite” with Daniel singing like a soaring protective presence, circling around his object of affection, repeating “I’m your satellite” and “I know I love you more.”
The album ends with the title track, “Lucifer on the Sofa,” which wouldn’t function anywhere except as the finale. A meandering piano, strumming guitar and elusive saxophone have an extended dialogue with each other. The 5+ minute song (longest on this album and long by most Spoon song standards) captures the antagonist at the heart of the preceding tracks. In describing the title imagery, Daniel says “this idea of Satan sitting with me on my couch, staring at me…Lucifer on the sofa is the worst you can become – the bitterness, or lack of motivation or desperation that keeps you down and makes you do nothing or self-indulge. So it’s a song about the battle between yourself and that character you can become.” Whether or not you’ve faced that personal battle (especially in these last few challenging years), Lucifer on the Sofa is the kind of raw burst of energy, a no-nonsense push for musical self-realization, that’s as cathartic for the band as it is for the listener.
Lucifer on the Sofa will be released on Friday, February 11th.
