Spoon gets the crowd moving at The Fillmore

Indie rock rarely sits still long enough to be studied or defined, but it has suffered the same criticisms since The Clean and the Pixies first crawled out of the primordial ooze to hoard Velvet Underground records: It’s not catchy enough. It’s too cool, or not cool enough. It’s too idiosyncratic, and too hard on the ears for a populace raised on pop.

And most of all, they say, you can’t dance to it.

Look out into the crowd at Johnny Brenda’s, The Church, Underground Arts, wherever, and you’ll see heads bobbing, but tilt your gaze down and you’ll spy the crossed arms and thoughtful frowns of an audience receiving the music like first communion: serious, self-conscious, maybe spiritual, possibly emotional, but also generally immobile. Yeah, I’m overstating it, but why don’t we look like we’re having any fun?

Don’t answer that, because there are exceptions that save the scene from mass calcification, and chief among them is Spoon, of Austin, Texas.

Led by the lithe and electric Britt Daniel, Spoon has been getting butts moving and hips grooving since the mid-’90s (possibly indie’s stiffest era). Sometimes it’s about the artful swagger and the blood-pumping staccato. Sometimes it’s the riffs and righteous beats. It’s also because he’s strutting and posing and leaning into the rock star vibes like the figurehead on some sturdy galleon. And backlit, always backlit.

At a filled-past-capacity Fillmore on Tuesday night, Spoon poured sweat and vigor into a tight set packed with what one may confidently call “the hits:” “I Turn My Camera On,” “The Way We Get By,” “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb,” “Do You,” etc. They led with “Take a Walk,” a funky bruiser, and followed it up with the space cadet anthem, “Wild.” 

Again and again, the crowd responded with increased levels of joyous boogie-like activity and above average getting down. Perhaps “The Underdog” came off a bit tame despite its status as a fists-up banger, but “The Hardest Cut” has never sounded more deliciously menacing.

There’s a new Spoon record on the horizon, but we heard none of it at The Fillmore. Not even last year’s split single of “Chateau Blues” and “Guess I’m Falling in Love” made the cut. This was a hot summer rock show in a room stuffed with bodies like the Well of Souls, and this band that moves to its own currents could do no wrong.

Technically, this was a double-headliner show, with Spoon sharing the spotlight with New Zealand indie-pop act The Beths. Led by singer-guitarist Elizabeth Stokes and guitarist-singer Jonathan Pearce, the band has been on an upward trajectory from album to album, the most recent being Straight Line Was a Lie, released just about a year ago.

The Beths have no shortage of sweet harmonies and strummy guitars, but steel yourself for little bee stings of melancholy around every corner. This was especially true when it came to their closer, the title track off 2022’s Expert in a Dying Field. It’s a breakup song like no other, plumbing rarely plumbed depths. Pure frisson.

The evening started with a set by indie folk artist Squirrel Flower, aka Ella O’Connor Williams. I didn’t manage to wade through the sea of humanity in time to snap pics in the photo pit. But check out her most recent record Tomorrow’s Fire, from 2023.