Spoon

Review: Songs have clearly become the go-to support for US indie acts, and their droney golden-days-of-Flying-Nun brand of indie-guitar warmed the already-packed room up nicely (although, having seen them end with the anticlimactic Krautrocky ‘My Number' several times now, would it kill them to mix the set up a bit more?) before hard-working techs spent a solid hour getting Spoon's clearly-very-fiddly gear set up properly. And they needed to, because much of the Austin quartet's sound is, literally, their sound: very particular instruments through very particular amps. The set began with an acoustic guitar and keyboard run through Transference's ‘Mystery Zone' before the entire band convened on stage for a powerful take on ‘Written in Reverse'. On-stage banter was non-existent, but as they wandered through an eclectic set – ‘Don't Make Me A Target', ‘Small Stakes', ‘Is Love Forever', their cover of the Damned's ‘Love Song' – it became clear that Spoon are not a band playing to the Hits'n'Memories crowd. Single ‘I Turn My Camera On' appeared late in the set, but it was mainly late-period album cuts until the set ended with ‘Nobody Gets Me But You'.

Things didn't change much in the encore: ‘Saw The Light' and ‘Rhythm and Soul' appeared before the set-closing ‘You Got Yr Cherry Bomb', and this is where the importance of the band's sound really came in: stripped of the spirited saxophones from the album the song sounded thin and anaemic. There was no ‘Jonathon Fisk', no ‘Sister Jack', no ‘The Way We Get By' – and while a band needn't pander to the crowd, a couple more favourites could have turned this from a good show to a great one. Andrew P Street