Spoon Stream Gimme Fiction Reissue Alongside Demos and Discussion with Britt Daniel

Photo via Spoon

Spoon recently announced a 10th-anniversary reissue of their 2005 album Gimme Fiction, which Merge will reissue on December 11. Now, in a new interview with NPR, frontman Britt Daniel has given a track-by-track rundown of how he made the album alongside a streaming setup in which you can listen to early demos and the final, remastered songs side-by-side, with Daniel’s commentary below.

When writing on “The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine”, for example, Daniel says:

“I was drinking a lot [at the time] and that was the very first idea that led to this song. It was this sort of thing where I was singing, ‘Every morning I pick up the cans.’ I didn’t really want to write about that. But it kind of had a little snippet of an idea with some urgency. The vocal over those chords felt urgent, so I liked it. So I kept working on it. And the words didn’t come forever. Somehow I came up with this idea of ‘the two sides of Monsieur Valentine,’ but I didn’t know what that meant, exactly. Then I came up with the whole idea about the Duchess and the Duke and a play I called The Stranger Dance, and this whole world. And eventually it became really colorful and cool. But it took a while. I’d get an idea and think, ‘What kind of sense can I make of this?’ Often it’s a combination of the intended and the unintended. I went down this path about the two sides, didn’t know what it meant, then asked, ‘What can this mean?’

Elsewhere, Daniel discusses the recording process with John Vanderslice and Scott Solter, the amount of time it took the team to write and record the songs, and other creative influences, from Prince to Danzig.

Read the entire interview here.

The Gimme Fiction collection, which is available digitally and as a double-LP/double-CD, includes a remastered version of the record, 12 previously-unreleased demos, and nine bonus tracks.

Additionally, the reissue comes with a full-color book featuring photos and an oral history of the record, which can be viewed here. A variety of configurations are available through the band’s website.

Listen to one of the demos from the reissue, “Was It You?”, below.

Read our Interview with Britt Daniel on the Songs of Spoon.

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