From the ACL Taping Program on August 18, 2005:
The Killers debuted on the national music scene in 2004 with the infectious pop rock single “Somebody Told Me.” With their first release,
Hot Fuss, this Las Vegas band gave ‘80s synth-pop a modern twist to earn both critical and commercial success.
With a name taken from a New Order video, the band formed in 2002 and began crafting a collection of songs about murders, stalkers, AIDS victims and androgynous girlfriends. After a slew of European shows in 2003, the band finished their debut CD, which was released in June 2004 to virtually unanimous critical praise.
“If you looked at where music was going a few years ago, you wouldn’t think this would happen,” said singer/keyboardist Brandon Flowers in a
Rolling Stone interview. “But now, rock bands are actually starting to make people dance instead of just elbow people.”
Spin named
Hot Fuss one of the year’s 40 best albums saying the Las Vegas band is “the U.S.’s best stab yet at slickly alluring Anglo electropop” who with “sure-shot party starters ‘Mr. Brightside’ and ‘Somebody Told Me’ make hedonism sound almost holy.”
Hot Fuss was also one of
Rolling Stone’s top 50 CDs of the year. The band’s debut single “Somebody Told Me” was nominated for two Grammy Awards – Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance by a Group – and the second single “Mr. Brightside” has been in heavy rotation on all music video channels.
From the ACL Taping Program on March 17, 2005:
For Spoon, Austin’s premier indie rock band for almost a decade, it all starts with the song. Leader Britt Daniel is a songwriter in the classic sense, composing alone with his guitar or piano, and then bringing his work to the group. His bandmates embellish the tunes with their own magic. “Lyrics are so important,” Daniel told
Seattle Weekly. “But, as a song, the first thing that affects me is just the feel of it. Then I notice the lyrics. To me it has always been about the melody and the feel first, and then if you can have an incredible lyric in there as well, that’s the whole package.”
And what a package it is on Spoon’s fourth album
Gimme Fiction. With tunes that find Daniel at his most confessional while holding the listener at the distance implied by the title, the album “gives you the sense that, yes, something new can be done with indie rock – and with pop music, period,” according to Seattle Weekly. The band rolls all its pop, new wave, punk and singer/songwriter influences into a stunning tour de force that takes the unprepossessing quartet to the next level.
Not only does
Gimme Fiction move Spoon forward creatively, but it also puts the band on a new career plateau as well: the album debuted at #44 on the
Billboard charts by selling 20,000 copies in its first week. Not that success is going to the band’s head. “I knew when I made it not when girls started swarming,” Daniel related to the
San Francisco Gate, “but when my grandmother called me up and said she’s proud of me.”
