The 20 Best Albums of 2007 - Spoon: "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga"

12.  Pop music has become a lost artform in recent years. Yeah, the music industry deserves a ton of blame for not adapting to the times and embracing digital distribution soon enough, but another component of their rapid demise has been their inability to recognize quality pop music when they see it. Fortunately for us there are labels like Merge Records who do the heavy lifting the major labels seem too disinterested to do themselves. 

Once again Merge bestowed upon the music listening public another pop music gem in the form of Spoon's sixth album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. Nonsensical album title aside, the Austin quartet builds upon their reputation as the most efficient band in rock music with 36 minutes of seamless guitar hooks, toe-tapping melodies and soulful lyrics. What's more, Britt Daniel and company continue to pay homage to the best moments of American musical history by incorporating Motown-inspired piano rhythms, jazzy brass accompaniment and R&B melodies into their songs almost as a reminder to the rest of us of what good pop music used to sound like. Luckily for us, those sounds aren't completely lost on the current generation.

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Video of the Week - Spoon - "Don't You Evah"

There isn't a whole lot of explanation needed for why this video is awesome. It beautifully combines two things I love so much; tightly crafted pop music and robots.

As for the first component, is there really a band out there today that writes better pop songs than Spoon? Pretty much every album they've ever produced has been 30-40 minutes of carefree toe-tapping pop brilliance, and their new album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is certainly no exception. This little ditty is one of the standout tracks and if you're not already sold after the first three notes of that wicked bass hook, then I don't know what to tell you.

Of course, as if this song wasn't enjoyable enough as is, Spoon decided to kick up the camp factor in the music video by giving a little yellow robot a starring role. Named "Keepon", the little guy is actually a prototype developed by researchers at Japan's (where else?) National Institute of Communications Technology. His moves are put on display all over the city (Tokyo?) and eventually the video culminates in a dance-off between Keepon and several other robots. . .no joke! The only thing this video is missing is Keepon busing a move and then announcing in a monotone robot voice, "you've been served!"

Oh, and by the way, lucky Los Angeles Spoon fans will get to see Keepon perform live and in-person when he joins Spoon (or is it the other way around?) on stage for their September 10th performance at the Henry Fonda Theater.

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