Amazingly, "I Turn My Camera On" is the first single to be taken from Austin, TX mainstays' SPOON'S sixth album, but - while Chinese whispers of the band's excellence have previously passed this reviewer's earlobes - this is actually the first time he's been able to check them out in any sort of detail.
And the devil is indeed in the details with the unsettlingly good "I Turn My Camera On". A reined-in and tense affair musically, the song rides along on corrosive disco beats and sounds like an eerie, long-lost relative of the current punk-funk bandwagon jumpers, but presents itself with murderous intent all its' own.
The song opens with frontman Britt Daniel murmuring "I turn my camera on, I cut my fingers on the way, I'm slipping away" and just gets creepier therein. It's a weird, but melodically effective slice of voyeurism, along the lines of a modern day "Blow Up" (and we all know how murderous THAT got, eh?) which is somehow all the more effective because the squall of guitars you expect will break at any moment never quite happens. Indeed, the track is a clammy, hipquakin' shiver and shake that's as close to the Stones' "Miss You" as it is to The Futureheads.
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Second track "Carryout Kids" is also worth eavesdropping in upon. This time, it's a slow, piano-based ballad/weird out that comes from some curious subteranean cavern and features a chorus of "I check the miles in the tank, go to the movies and the bank and stay well hid." It may or may not be about an assassin in hiding, but it's bloody furtive and effective regardless.
Sadly, closing track "You Was It" is a fuzzed-up and throwaway affair which sounds like a Pere Ubu out-take, but let's gloss over that. More importantly, "I Turn My Camera On" is intense, goosebump-inducing pop and - for this writer at least - an introduction not easily forgotten.
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