★★★★

1. Rent I Pay: 👍🏻
2. Inside Out: 👍🏻
3. Rainy Taxi: 👍🏻
4. Do You: 👍🏻
5. Knock Knock Knock: 🤷‍♂️
6. Outlier: 🤷‍♂️
7. They Want My Soul: 👍🏻
8. I Just Don’t Understand: 👍🏻
9. Let Me Be Mine: 👍🏻
10. New York Kiss: 👍🏻

I had a bit of a crisis of confidence yesterday when I listened to Hot Thoughts. I have loved Spoon for a long time, and I really didn’t enjoy their latest. I realized yesterday that I’ve only listened to They Want My Soul once before, and I wasn’t all that impressed with it either. I decided to listen to it today because I wanted to see if I could understand Hot Thoughts better through the lens of They Want My Soul. IE was Hot Thoughts a complete departure, or did their style shift more than I realized and now that I’ve heard Hot Thoughts, will I hear more of this new thing in They Want My Soul?

I was surprised but relieved to discover that They Want My Soul was much more in line with their previous work than Hot Thoughts. I found myself really liking a lot of the songs, much more so than the first time I listened to it. I can’t help but wonder if that’s just because it’s so much more comfortable than listening to Hot Thoughts was, or if it’s because the songs are actually good.

One impression I got listening to They Want My Soul was that of all their albums, this was the Spoon-iest. Which is to say that it seemed the most like their style than the rest of their records. That said, I don’t think it’s their best album. Rent I Pay was the big single, but it’s not that great. Although it is better than a lot of the rest of the album. (I think my favorite was I Just Don’t Understand, though.) In hindsight, maybe Hot Thoughts had to be a departure because they took their style as far as it would go with They Want My Soul. Or maybe I’m over-analyzing it?