The Listomania I make the lists, you shoot them down. Quid Pro Quo.

122. Spoon – You Got Yr Cherry Bomb

You may have realized if you've been reading everyday that I have a startling affinity for horns, horn sections, marching bands, pretty much any brassy shit. I tend to love songs that feature them, and I tend to specifically mention them as a highlight when talking about those songs. This is a specific style of brass, though, and how it plays in the context of the song is very important. I'm not talking ska. No one should take any ska made in the last 20 years seriously - fun, but that's it. This is the real deal - Chess, Stax. Motown shit. You might say I have lean on that music sometimes, as in I would probably rather listen to Al Green or Marvin Gaye or Otis Redding than just about anything else 50% of the time. Oh yeah, and I like indie music still too.

Which is why this is my favorite song Spoon has ever produced. I love the band, but this has a sound unlike anything else in the canon. A lot of people don't know that Spoon have actually been around for like 16 years now. They didn't start getting indiettention until Kill the Moonlight dropped in 2002, and the didn't start getting any real-person attention until this album, 2007's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, one of the best albums in a year of great albums. But over that decade and a half of turbulent change in music, the band had stuck with a deep down pop groove, deep bass and plodding-jab guitars, lots of empty space and post-punk shreds. A nicer Modest Mouse that would at least buy you a glass of wine first. So, uh, what the fuck is this?

This is the sound of a band maturing. Chiming pianos and xylophone usher in Britt Daniel's voice, the driving light snare and a tamborine being played on the other end of a wind tunnel. And then at :23, a horn section quietly staccato sidesteps it's way into the background, laying low behind the established melodies. More voices fade in and out of the mix like ghosts in the studio, or ghosts in the machine. The song sounds like it was inspired by the room, the place it was made, not the band or the sound - like Spoon went into Stax and recorded a spectral impression, filtered through their voices and instruments. At 1:57, when the noise drops out and we're left with a few brief seconds of xylo and hand claps, there is one last breath of fresh air before the horns stomp back in and finally take over the song they have been brewing behind. The ghost vocals coo along with the fading music, and like that, in less than three minutes, the spectres of Spector's past are gone. That noise at the end of the track, by the way, is the original space rock version of the song. Another ghost of Spoon's past played out in one of the best songs of their prolific career.