By Chris Varias
The Cincinnati Enquirer

We don't need England when we have Texas. Spoon, once a middling '90s indie-rock band in the vein of Pavement, have since found their sound in the echoes of the Jam, Elvis Costello, Gang of Four and the like. Now the Austin, Texas, group is something special, and in 2002 they came up with Kill the Moonlight, the Brit-Pop album of the year.

It has been about five years since Spoon has played in the area, and you're forgiven if you don't remember that performance, considering Swervedriver blew them off the stage at Sudsy Malone's. Friday, Spoon returned triumphantly with a modern mod-rock sound, and the band wowed the sellout crowd at Southgate House with songs from Kill the Moonlight and its predecessor, 2001's Girls Can Tell.

The quartet - singer-guitarist Britt Daniel, bassist Josh Zarbo, drummer Jim Eno and keyboardist Kevin Lovejoy - hammered through 20 tunes in just over an hour. Their approach was to rock the songs harder than their recorded versions. Rocking harder is always encouraged, but in this case the minimalist pleasures of those recordings were at times compromised.

The most glaring example was "Small Stakes," Kill the Moonlight's haunting lead track. With its keyboard riff, Daniel's Brit-like vocals and a stuttering tambourine rhythm, the song's sparse arrangement makes it jarring and unique. Friday it was just another good rock tune, as Spoon performed it with drums, bass and all.

Crooked Fingers, the second band on the bill, has also gone through distinct changes. Led by Eric Bachmann, formerly of Archers of Loaf, Crooked Fingers has in the past played Southgate House shows acoustic-style, with Bachmann croaking his dissolute sing-alongs to the accompaniment of banjo and upright bass.

Jo Jamison, the upright bass player, is still around, but this time Bachmann and Barton Carroll brought the rock on electric guitars, as did Dov Friedman on drums.

The result landed somewhere between Crooked Fingers' folksy laments and the Archers' runaway rockers. It was the night's best set, climaxing with the surreal one-two punch of Echo and the Bunnymen's "Bring on the Dancing Horses" and Bob Dylan's "I'll Keep it with Mine."

Openers the Light Wires rounded out a great night of music. The local band hasn't been together very long, but already they rank second to the Ass Ponys in Cincinnati's Americana scene, thanks to Jeremy Pinelle's songwriting and distinct voice, and guitarist Andy Hittle's ringing melodies.