Spoon – Lucifer On The Sofa

Spoon has been around for over thirty years. I am neither a fan nor a hater, and I have a few of their albums in my collection, but they have never truly clicked for me. In festival situations, I found them engaging live. One of my daughter’s coworkers requested that I review this album.

After listening to the album for the first time, my first impression of Lucifer On The Sofa is a pretty impressive album by a band three decades into their career—a rarity for a tenth album in a successful rock career. Googling, you learn Lucifer on the Sofa received widespread critical acclaim (an impressive 85 on Metacritic) and was nominated for Best Rock Album at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards (2023 – Patient Number 9 by English Ozzy Osbourne won).

Even the band themselves had a sense they were on to something. Per the band’s website:

“Spoon’s tenth album, Lucifer on the Sofa, is the band’s purest rock ’n roll record to date. Texas-made, it is the first set of songs that the quintet has put to tape in its hometown of Austin in more than a decade. Written and recorded over the last two years –both in and out of lockdown –these songs mark a shift toward something louder, wilder, and more full-color.”

Enough of what others think; what do I think? I have always admired Spoon’s frontman, Britt Daniel. He has a cool rock voice and epic guitar riffs. This album perfectly displays both. It is a guitar-forward rock album, and it resonates with me in a way that no other Spoon album has. I appreciate that I was prompted to listen to it; otherwise, it would never have been on my radar. It is an impressive late-career statement from the band.

The opening track, “Held,” has an enormous aggressive rock riff. In juxtaposition to the riff, the lyrics are about emotional surrender.

“The Hardest Cut” is another nice riff, this time bass-forward. It has excellent guitar solos. Lyrically, the narrator is dreading a life change.

“The Devil & Mister Jones” sounds like Hall & Oats if they were an edgy indie-rock band. Mister Jones is a recurring character in pop/rock music (for example, Dylan’s “Ballad Of. A Thin Man”. Per Britt:

“I’m super aware of the legacy of songs about Mr. Jones. I thought about it for half a second and then I decided I do like the idea of contributing to the canon of that work. I’ve heard so many of them and I don’t think I’ve heard one that I didn’t like yet. Mr. Jones never seems to be a good guy, does he? And the guy in my song definitely is a bad man.”

Spoon’s Mister Jones is a charismatic grifter compared to Dylan’s uptight square. Given this album’s orange branding, it is hard not to think of Trump as Mister Jones. A bonus is Steve Berlin’s (Los Lobos) baritone sax. Double bonus: this song is danceable.

“Wild” was co-written by Jack Antonoff and Britt Daniel. Anonoff’s claim to fame is song co-writing and production work with female pop artists like Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Lana Del Rey, and many more. The song has a beautiful 80s new wave vibe.

“My Babe” slows the pace; it starts as a ballad and then revs up to a full-on rocker. Lyrically, the narrator is in an emotional rut, and then his lover shakes things up – in a good way.

“Feels Alright” sounds like it could be an Oasis hit – a nice punchy pop-rock tune. Per Daniel, the song is

“…about feeling good and feeling alive, about the great feeling you have about a really great night. It’s not super deep, but if I think about it more, I’m writing about when I was young.”

“On the Radio” is about the power of music and the medium it used to be delivered (radio). I am old enough to remember when radio and music were synonymous (and symbiotic). I no longer know anyone who listens to terrestrial radio for music. This ends up being a sentimental song about an old paradigm.

“Astral Jacket” has a dreamy Beck feel: it sounds like searching. I’m not sure what an Astral Jacket is, but my guess is some kind of transport to a higher place.

The sonics of “Satellite” sound out of place with the rest of the album. This song has been a part of the band’s live repertoire since 2014. It is not a bad song, it just doesn’t fit the aesthetics of the rest of the album.

“Lucifer On The Sofa” is a cool title and an interesting image. Sonically, it returns to the aesthetics of the rest of the album. I struggled to understand what the song was about. There are several references to Austin, Texas (the band’s HQ). Fortunately, Daniel has this quote about the song to help reveal its meaning:

“That Lucifer on the sofa, it’s the worst that you can be, that you can face in times of stress. It’s a part of yourself you have to deal with. It’s a representation of bitterness or loneliness, and it’s that thing that can keep you on the couch and maybe doing nothing for a week, self-indulging. So, this song, to me, is about the battle between yourself and that character you can become.”

This is an excellent album, and I am surprised that, with all its critical acclaim, I missed it. But there is so much great music in the world it is easy to miss a masterpiece. Spoon is not the first band that I became a fan through their late era catalog, for example I also became a fan of The National and the Drive-By Truckers that way. If you are unfamiliar with Spoon, this is the place to start.

Postscript: Spoon simultaneously released Lucifer on the Moon, a dub remix of Lucifer on the Couch by British dub producer Adrian Sherwood. It is a nice bonus to the original album.