It was 9:15 on a school night when Britt Daniel marshaled the Spoon crew onto the stage at Philly’s Fillmore. It’s a band lineup iteration that includes bassist Ben Trokan, plus Gerardo Larios and Alex Fischel playing various other instruments to Jim Eno’s enduring beats, the now silver-haired co-founding drummer looking just a little more like David Byrne with each passing day.
With a couple wordless gestures to a warm crowd, Spoon unleashed the swinging steamroller “Held,” the opening cut from Lucifer On The Sofa, released this past February, their tenth studio album in the band’s almost thirty years – a record concisely summed up by Daniel himself, in a recent interview with Kentucky’s WFPK when he noted, “it’s the sound of classic rock as written by a guy who never did get Eric Clapton.” At 51 now, Daniel is as fun to watch as ever, as he delivers with each performance a master class on how to frontman. Brandishing his new signature amarillo-gold thinline Telecaster, the result of a recent collaboration with Fender, his stagecraft nods loudly to his beloved influences right down to the Presley poses, Buddy Holly hiccups, and the primal screams of the Plastic Ono Band.