Pitchfork

Photo by Marty Perez

These days, we're stuck deep in that weird, dispiriting gulf between Spoon albums. You know the drill: The last one, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, is a year-and-a-half old now, and we've heard all the songs enough times that we know when each little guitar ping will come in. But the band hasn't announced any plans for another album yet, and we know it'll probably be a while. So we actually have to turn to old Spoon albums to fulfill our daily spiky-minimal-pop needs. This isn't entirely a bad thing (Girls Can Tell still bangs!), but any new Spoon news would be welcome news indeed.

Well, here's something: As Jon Spong's (pretty good!) Texas Monthly profile of frontman Britt Daniel reveals, Daniel is in Los Angeles right now cutting demos with film composer and Fiona Apple/Kanye West/Of Montreal buddy Jon Brion. "We're writing together, which is different for me," Daniel tells Spong. "I’ve never gone somewhere to write with someone. I wrote some things once with Miles Zuniga [of Austin's Fastball], but that was more, 'We need a verse, now a chorus.' This is doing things with individual sounds, things that could become sections of songs."

Brion produced "The Underdog", which some (not this writer, but some) consider to be Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga's best song, so it's already been established that Brion's heavily orchestrated impressionism makes a surprisingly good match for Spoon's arch spaciousness.

But that demo work doesn't mean Spoon's going to drop a brand-new album next month or anything. Spong writes, "Daniel plans to convene the band in early March in a studio in Portland, his home-away-from-Austin for the past four years. He predicts he might have a half a record’s worth of songs ready by then. And he might like how they sound with the band. Or he might not. So the next long-player won't likely come before 2010."

Dag.

The article also mentions that Spoon have recorded two new songs, neither of which Daniel sounds especially amped about: "One's a rocker that [Austin producer] Mike McCarthy tried to make sound like Joy Division. The other is kinda middle of the road, a song we tried to make new wave and probably shouldn’t have." Also, Daniel's written a song about former "Drexell's Class"/"Buffalo Bill" star Dabney Coleman. He probably won't feel like releasing it anytime soon, but at least he's written it.

Daniel also gave a working title for the new album: Me and Matty Pickles. Apparently there is a dude in the band the Subjects named Matty Pickles.

For now, Spoon only have one show scheduled: March 6 at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, Oregon.

In other news, Daniel just finished producing the sophomore album from the New York band White Rabbits, which makes sense because White Rabbits kind of sound like Spoon.