Spoon
“Who Makes Your Money”
from Transference
Merge, January 2010
Restraint can be so sexy! Listen to the minimalist groove of this song: It’s mostly a tight pencil sketch of a drumbeat and a three-note keyboard hook that sounds like fingertips just barely grazing the keys. The bass comes in not much more often than every other measure, just enough to keep the low end a presence in your mind. There’s a rhythm-guitar…undercurrent, is the best word for it. Every once in a while there’s a little textural sizzle that fades in and out. Even the vocals are deployed with the minimal sufficient force: The titular refrain is so underpronounced that I spent my first listen to the song thinking it was called “Who Makes You Mine.” And perhaps with that in mind I thought this was a song about dark, possessive sexuality–a misconception that did not change one iota when I found out the real title, by the way. It was only when I made a point of seeking out the lyrics that I discovered it’s actually a song about being a slave to the wage, not a slave to love. But with an arrangement this exquisitely perched on the precipice between sensuous and ominous, it works either way.