The Beast and Dragon, Adored

My friend Shay is the only person I've met here in Louisville who can keep up with me in a conversation about music. Our tastes don't always overlap, but like me, he grew up on heavy metal, which gives us one common bond. Better yet, he's turned me on to a few bands that I've either always meant to listen to but never got around to it, such as Girls Against Boys, or that I've never heard of. Case in point, Spoon (pictured). He gave me a copy of their 2002 album Kill the Moonlight last year, coincidentally a few weeks before Spoon happened to play a gig at Headliners. We went, I enjoyed, but since I only knew the Moonlight material (and barely at that), it wasn't as edifying as it could have been.

Last May, Spoon put out a swell new CD called Gimme Fiction, and when dates were announced for the tour, I was pleased to see that Louisville was one of the stops. This time, I studied the material as best I could, which meant two weeks before the show, I stuck Kill the Moonlight in my car's CD player and swapped it out for Gimme Fiction one week before the show.

I was amazed how many people turned up for the show. I have no idea how many people will fit into Headliners, but trust me when I say it was packed. Happily, Spoon delivered. Frontman Britt Daniel is hardly a virtuoso guitarist, but his playing perfectly complements his spiky, bouncy sound. Two encores.

Better still, the merch booth was stocked with a healthy selection of the band's CDs, so I plunked down $36 for legit copies of the two most recent discs, plus Girls Can Tell from 2001.

No set list because I didn't have anything to write with, or on, for that matter. The played all but two songs from Fiction, a big chunk of Moonlight as well as "The Fitted Shirt" from Girls Can Tell.