I spend a lot of time on here complaining about indie rock records. I listen to a lot of them, and have gotten pretty bored with the genre, specifically the “indie” part of it. I figured that an album by Spoon—one of the biggest indie rock bands of the past ten years—would have me uninterested from the get-go. However, Spoon has reminded me of what a great rock record sounds like.
That’s right, rock. No “indie” anywhere to be found. This record isn’t whiney or sensitive, nor does it fuzz every instrument up beyond recognition. It’s straight-up rock ‘n’ roll.
We need some straightforward, standard music every now and then. Looking at what I’ve been listening to recently, I see why Series of Sneaks may have been especially pleasing. There’s been a ton of weird music running through my headphones over the past few weeks—not that there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, many would say that it’s my “weird” taste in music that prompted me to start this thing up.
While we’re on the subject of me, I just noticed that I’ve started like the past 50 posts with some variation on the “I was expecting [x], I was really happy when [y] happened” formula. That’s just laziness on my part, and I’ll definitely look out for it in the coming days.
Anyway, I’m also going to try to stop beginning paragraphs with “anyway.” Back to the music. At the conclusion of this record, I found myself disappointed—not with the quality of the music, but actually with the fact that the album ended. For some strange reason, I wanted some more of this middle-of-the-road rock. If that’s not a sign of a good album, I don’t know what is.
Swole Ear 