The New Cue #451 December 11: Britt Daniel of Spoon

"It was OK to look a little freaky, and in fact, we needed to look a little freaky."

It’s a tale as old as time (i.e. the 1990s). A music publication asks a subject to detail the albums and songs that have defined them at various points in their life. It’s a tidy device for getting to know an artist, while also prompting readers to listen to all kinds of music. We then package it up and call it something like, I don’t know, The Soundtrack of My Life.

Guess what? That’s exactly what we’ve done with this new (hopefully) regular feature. First up is Britt Daniel, singer, songwriter and mainstay with Austin, Texas’s perennial new wavers, Spoon. A great, great band. As Daniel says, “The sound of a classic rock band as written by a guy who never did get Eric Clapton.” Personal favourite albums include Kill the Moonlight (2002), Gimme Fiction (2005: tried to get new employers Q mag interested in this upon release: they did not invest for another five years, the fools), and the brilliant breakthrough Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (2007). If you’d rather just listen to a compilation, well, they released one of those in 2019.

Britt’s not here plugging any of those albums, though I’m sure he’s happy to have you listening. He’s here to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the also excellent They Want My Soul, which they’ve just made all Deluxe and purdy. Here, listen next.

We emailed over our Soundtrack of My Life categories and Britt sent back his answers along with a lovely selfie. It’s all below, for our treasured subscribers.

See you on Friday,

Ted and Niall

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The Soundtrack of My Life: Britt Daniel of Spoon

The Song That Turned Me On To Music:

Help! - The Beatles
I remember being eight or so, riding my bike, singing Help! to myself and thinking about how it felt different from other songs. Help! felt urgent musically, and it felt dark lyrically. It wasn’t a love song. It stood on its own in terms of the type of music I was hearing at that age. It felt like an actual plea and I liked that intensity.

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The First Album I Wore Out Listening To:

I’ve never exactly worn out a record but I got three albums for my birthday in seventh grade that were the first albums I personally owned, so I listened to them over and over and over again. They were Around The World In A Day, Who’s Afraid Of The Art Of Noise?, and The Unforgettable Fire. Ya know as a seventh grader, you don’t have access to loads of money. And lacking money, I had either the radio or my parents records or I had those three albums. I got real close with them.