Song Exploder - Spoon - Inside Out

Episode Date: August 19, 2014

Spoon was formed in 1993 by singer Britt Daniel and drummer Jim Eno. They've released eight albums, including their most recent record, They Want My Soul, which came out in August 2014. In this episode, Jim Eno breaks down the song Inside Out, explaining how it went from the original demo to the finished album version, including what other music influenced the recording. Plus, we'll hear from their co-producer, Dave Fridmann, whose other credits include The Flaming Lips album The Soft Bulletin, and Oracular Spectacular by MGMT.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hurway. The band's spoon was formed in 1993 by singer Britt Daniel and drummer Jim Eno. They've released eight albums, including their most recent record, They Want My Soul, which came out in August 2014. In this episode, Jim Eno breaks down the song Inside Out, explaining how it went from the original demo to the finished album version, including what other music influenced the recording. Plus, we'll hear from their co-producer Dave Friedman, whose other credits include the Flaming Lips album's Soft Bulletin and MGMT's Iracular Spectacular.

Here's Spoon on Song Exploder. Hi, this is Jim Eno. I play drums in Spoon. So there's Britt Daniel, who is the songwriter, guitar player, and lead vocalist. There is Rob Pope, who is the bass player, Eric Harvey, who plays keys, guitar. Alex Fischel who plays keys, guitars, and a lot of other things.

We're talking about Inside Out off of our latest record, They Want My Soul. This is the first way I heard it. You know the thing that I really love about this demo is that intro. It's not on the record. It's in five. Brits always trying to throw curveballs at us. So, like, sometimes I'll get something like this and it'll be a demo and he'll be like,

hey, this is something I'm working on. And he'll, like, just sort of see what people do with that. He'll play a demo and he'll be like, okay, let's figure out different ways to approach this. So it would be like, okay, Elvis Costello, I don't know, Iggy Pop. What would you do? And then we'll just imagine, like, how a band like that would actually approach this song. It never sounds really like Iggy Pop or You Too. It always sounds like Spoon.

But there's just these little things that seep in. Britt played the demo, but then he was like, hey, I have this idea. Let's approach this like Dr. Dre's 2001. There's a lot of slower tempos on that record, but a lot of really cool, hooky, simple melodic parts. You know, I think moving it into more of a beat. oriented style was the right thing to do. So we listened to some of 2001. Then we just played the song a bunch of times. I did what I thought like a Dr. Dre drumbeat would be. So then you hear the new demo. I knew we were going to sort of create a sort of like a sample kit to replace my drums. So what I did here

the studio as I was working on building up snare samples and kick samples and things that I thought sounded good together that we took to Dave Friedman's. When we started the song, he pulled those up and used some of them, use some of his to create the kick and snare that's on the record. Fine with me, even though I'm the drummer. It's all about the record and the song, you know. This song, has three solos, three keyboard solos. I think that's a spoon first, by the way. You'll hear this harpsichord thing. I worked with Alex on that little part. I think it was just his Nord harpsichord sound, but we wanted to get something that sounded like a hip-hop kind of sample thing. One of the things about hip-hop samples is they're taking it from another place. And I feel like

it's cool when sometimes they fall out of time creating this sort of weird tension kind of thing. You know, that kind of thing. You know, I was sort of pushing Alex to not be as in time at the end of that line. The second solo at 322 was the more difficult one. Yeah, this is a tough one. We were looking for something simple, hooky, but also had a really cool sound to it. And the problem is that all three of those are incredibly subjective to any different person. This second solo here went through a lot of iterations. Finally we came up with something that just worked really well. If you ever listen to old Marvin Gay stuff, there is a sound with the snare,

that I had never been able to figure out what it was when I started recording. And then I found this one version, a mix version of a song that basically had these bongos super dry. And what it ended up being, that sound is, it sounds really great with the snare. So what I did is I didn't know if it was going to be used. I just wanted to try a bongo part.

You'll throw down ideas and you never know if the, going to get used and you know we trust Dave and the way Dave would mix is we would be out of the room for about eight hours and then when we would come back in we would listen to the song and i remember him saying something like um boy you know i pulled that bongo track up and i was just like this is never going to work and then he's like but then i started putting it in and he's like i love it i was really happy that he liked it because i thought it was a good idea you know it's really It's just about And I'm a producer.

We've always co-produced the records with outside producers. It's good. It allows us to get other input and things like that. We had wanted to work with him for a while. I mean, I'm a big flaming lips, and I love that MGMT stuff he did, Tim Pala,

the Sleader Kinney record he did. You know, to be honest, I was a little bit nervous because I was like, what is spoon plus like soft bulletin gonna even sound like. That's like a crazy thing to even imagine what it's going to be. I don't know, I feel like this record is sort of what that is. We tend to have the vocals pretty dry. You know, we don't like reverb. We like it right up in your face. And we were like, well, maybe on this one,

we can try a little bit of an effect, or we would always give Dave like some leeway on things. We'd go ahead of a song in terms of effects and stuff. Basically, I was trying to set a banquet for them and then they could come in and pay. What he used on this was, I feel like it really draws you in. And it was a tape slap from one of his old, I think it's quarter inch reel to reels that he ran the vocal through. But it has just this buzz to it that I just really love. It really makes the vocal like very special to me. There's intense gravity in you.

There's intense gravity in you. I'm just your satellite. I'm just your satellite. All I know the time's gone inside out. And now it's only like I told you. No, they may wash my feet. They do not make me complete. Okay, so this part was something that Britt came up with.

At this point, everything muted, like, into, like, Digital Zero. Because it'd be cool, man. Yeah, you know, you just hear something in your head, and it's like, hey, I'm feeling something at this point. Let's try to mute every instrument all at the same time. What would that sound like, you know? Then Dave does the edit, and we're like, I don't know, maybe, maybe, no, let's add a couple things back in. And that's the kind of conversations that we have. And now here's Inside Out by Spoon in its entirety.

Visit SongExploder.net to learn more about Spoon, including links to buy the song Inside Out, as well as the mixed version of What's Going On by Marvin. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh, Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists.

And it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabond, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine, rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band.

The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. You can find all the past and future episodes of SongExploder at songexplor.net or on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you download podcasts. Find the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Song Exploder.

Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary, story-driven shows. Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. My name is Rishi-Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.