Coachella 2010: Spoon Review

Turning in a slowly-building set of their rollicking and minimalist indie rock cross-bred with a Kinks-styled rock classicism, Spoon turned in an engaging performance early Sunday evening on the Coachella Main Stage, manically bouncing from the stripped and skeletal tracks from their new album Transference (the roiling “Written in Reverse”; the pulsing “Who Makes Your Money,” which featured Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox on guitar) to the full-bodied and horn-lined closer, “The Underdog,” from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.

Hearing one indie rock ‘n pop nugget after another, if there was a flaw to Spoon’s set, it was due to the simple fact that despite their sonic differences, most of the tunes were mid-to-slightly-up tempo guitar rockers that tended to blend into one another, with only the aforementioned tracks truly standing out of the sometimes fairly indistinguishable–albeit extremely catchy–blur.  That said, it was a perfect set for dusk, a joyous little celebration of solid rock ‘n roll as the day wound down to a weary close.