Kevin Bronson on August 10th, 2014

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By Molly Bergen

Bright orange clouds reflected the glamor of Hollywood and the hidden sheen of a full moon down upon the cemetery stones. Friday night was one of the brightest of the summer, giving the Hollywood Forever Cemetery an eerie glow, bathing picnickers on the Fairbanks Lawn in half-twilight. The warm air was perfumed with jasmine, weed and beer, the kind of smells that bring back memories of teenage house parties. Although this house party, with Spoon as the special guest, had much more genteel sitting arrangements. Most of the crowd stretched out on the grass, although the more devout made their way to the front, clasping lit joints, passing out plastic cups of libations or freely swigging from flasks or entire bottles of wine. Bacchus would have been proud.

• ||| Photos by Michelle Shiers

Long ruby talons fluttered in the breeze at the back of the stage, lit by some unknown glow. It appeared as if a giantess was about to pluck the performers from the stage. Smoke machines began belching in a desperate attempt to fill the air with mystery. (Can we all agree that smoke machines on an outdoor stage are a complete waste of time and money? Just round up the pot smokers and put them in the front row. It would be much cheaper, but I digress.)

It has been a long time since Spoon has played in Los Angeles and with the formation in 2011 of Divine Fits, some worried (needlessly it seems) that they may never put out another album. The hum of anticipation turned into a roar as Spoon, clad in all black, took the stage at 9:01 p.m. Britt Daniel said not a word to the crowd, but raised his red plastic cup in greeting, before launching into “Knock Knock Knock” off their new album “They Want My Soul.” Even though the album had only been released on Tuesday and had been streaming the week before, a good chunk of the pit began singing along. Such is the power of the Internet.

The set was a seamless fusion of their new album – Spoon’s eighth and first since 2010 – and old favorites. The transition between “Rent I Pay” and “Don’t You Evah” was uncanny. It was as if the two were written a few months apart, not six years. Spoon has managed the voodoo trick of always sounding like themselves, while at the same time trying new things, and staying current. It was nothing short of wizardry.

It also makes you wonder if Spoon was born with the strut in their veins or if that got taught somewhere. Was there a strut class in their high school? Because you could be wearing a ratty, moth-eaten old bathrobe and bunny slippers and feel cool with Spoon in your headphones. Their percussion does something to everyone’s hips that makes their walk just that much slinkier.

“Thank you so much for showing up and sharing this beautiful night with us,” Daniel smiled at the crowd. The magnetic front man put on a show, kneeling during ballads as if the weight of the words were too much for him, pointing at the crowd in an accusatory manner to punctuate a betrayal, shaking a lone maraca to death then necessary, and always sharing credit with the rest of the band. After a well-received “Anything You Want,” he made sure we all knew that Jim Eno and Eric Harvey had written that song. He also took time out to introduce bassist, Rob Pope. A lot of Daniel’s power is in his approachability. Halfway through the set, he admitted that his friend who made one of his guitars was in the audience and he felt really bad because he had just dropped one of them. There is no shroud of mystery around these guys. They save that for their music.

The evening closed with “Black Like Me.” which the crowd really embraced, gleefully screaming “Yeah! Oh yeah!” at the top of their lungs. Then there was the pageantry that comes with an encore. Will they come on? Won’t they? Of course they will, there’s the guitar tech tuning their guitars. The encore, however, had some of the weakest moments of the evening. Daniels asked opener Dale Watson to come up on stage and sing “I Just Don’t Understand” with him, announcing that he had seen Watson play more than anyone else in the past 10 years. As soon as Watson opened up his mouth, you knew that this had been a big mistake. This rich velvety voice reverberated over the crowd and made Daniel’s nasal tone seem completely lifeless. Watson had the rich voice of a man who had seen some things he’d like to forget. The front man got upstaged by his own opener, which is always awkward.

The other misstep was sadly one of the most beloved songs of the night “The Underdog.” That song hinges on a horn section. If you don’t have a horn section on hand, you probably shouldn’t play that song. They did not have a horn section, so they tried to make up for it with a keyboard, which did not work. It was like trying patching up one’s sneakers with duct tape. Fortunately for them, the crowd didn’t give a damn and sang right over the whole thing. Spoon rebounded from that hiccup smoothly with their smash “Got Nuffin,” which closed the evening. That beat is undeniable. I bet even some of the dead were shaking their pelvises deep in their coffins to that one.

Molly Bergen is an L.A.-based freelance journalist and occasional contributor to Buzz Bands LA.