We regretted missing The Wallflowers at the Marquis in June so made a point to go see Spoon, another favorite band that has stayed active since my salad days introduction half a lifetime ago.
Concert on the Slopes, in its second summer season at Canyons Village Forum, hosted the Austin, Texas-based rockers last Sunday evening at the outdoor amphitheater. Spoon’s first Park City performance marked their 11th visit to Utah and the fourth date on their current tour in support of 2022’s Lucifer on the Sofa, which earned the band’s 10th album its first Grammy nomination. Seated tickets were sold out by the time I secured a pair of lawn spots for my girlfriend, Claire, and myself for $258.11.
Canyons allowed fans to bring low-backed chairs, plus our coolerful of non-alcoholic beverages and snacks. A shirtless man holding a pink inflatable guitar spread good vibes around the entrance, where we received a red stamp illustration of this same ski-bum character on our right wrists to give us re-entry. Past the merch booth, signs on the inclined turf alerted general admission fans that these were steep slopes. We carefully mounted up and around the control tent to stake our claim on the far side incline, stage right.
The sun had not yet set on our backs as we sunscreened and settled in on the grassy bank between Orange Bubble Express and Red Pine Gondola lifts.
At 7 o’clock, Dr. Ember Conley took the sunny stage in green gingham to introduce opening act A Giant Dog. The four men in this Texan quintet played a rousing instrumental to summon their lead singer, Sabrina Ellis, who strutted onstage in cowboy boots, black bikini bottom, and an unbuttoned leopard print shirt over a sheer black tank and big pearl necklace.
A dozen years deep as a band, A Giant Dog was touring in support of their freshly minted Raw EP. Ellis immediately delivered a peacocking, windmilling, fist-pumping, head-banging, Johnny Thunders-style stage presence, theatrically singing heartfelt lines like “Acne-scarred and shiner-marked and dripping Mountain Dew / Your car is up on cinder blocks and I’m obsessed with you,” on “Watch it Burn.”
All the band wore sunglasses as they played facing the setting sun while the crowd began to receive shade on our necks.
I heard traces of The Exploding Hearts through these bawdy, heartfelt songs such as “Photograph,” which included the lyrics, “I want to see you with your sagging tits.” In a bit of post-song banter, Ellis remarked, “There’s a spectrum of ages” in the crowd, and proposed that their lyrics could be an entry point for conversations about changing bodies between generations.
“And what do you have planned for the lawn? Cartwheeling down to the stage?” Ellis referred to fans up top on the steep slope in front of them. Ellis brought their 40-minute set to a close with a fond impression of Spoon’s lead singer Britt Daniel, “Life can be so fair. Let it go on and on.”
In the half-hour before the headliner appeared, a father returned to his family blanket with a handful of tees for everyone. His wife donned hers immediately as the evening was cooling down. Free listeners gathered along the upper crest beyond the grounds. Kona Beer’s stand offered loaded sweet potatoes with a meat topping for $20, which looked so good when we saw someone carrying it that we had to find our own.
Heading back to our seats, we saw my friend Joel and his girlfriend, Gretchen, capping off her birthday celebration. At 8:15, recorded Spanish voices began calling a bullfight to attention in a nod to Matador Records, Spoon’s first and current label, as the group strode out.
The first track from their 2007 album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, “Don’t Make Me a Target,” began with blinking red lights as frontman Britt Daniel played in his uniform of black shirt, brown pants and boots, working his white and black electric guitar, a custom Fender Tele Thinline. Fellow founding member Jim Eno drummed from an elevated block with a handprint turkey trace on his bass face. Two keyboards and bass guitar added pizzazz to the wall of sound as the band performed fronting a black stage curtain sliced by an ascending red strip. Daniel, 53, was on his knees singing under strobe lights before the song finished.
“My Mathematical Mind” arrived with Daniel’s vocals sounding clear and precise in the mountain air, then “I’m looking “th-h-h-h-rough you” hit with a cutting trill as green lights twinkled. Viewers in the lower section began leaving their assigned seats to stand in front of the band reaching great sonic heights before drawing to an abrupt silence.
Working back through their catalog to 1998’s A Series of Sneaks, “Metal Detektor” arrived as an understated heist manifesto where Daniel’s fast enunciation contrasted with his soft choral “ooohs” in the jade stagelight.
The crowd stirred at the recognizable intro to “Wild,” a Jack Antonoff-produced single from Lucifer on the Sofa. On the lawn, a man drummed along tapping the shoulders of his partner leaning in his lap. Smoke blew across the stage as Daniel referenced buried treasure and “The world, still so wild, called to me” certainly hit in this western outdoor setting. Before red and white lights, a couple of older hippies who had been standing up since the beginning twisted their hands.
In the applause after “Me and the Bean,” Daniel told the crowd, “That’s my dad’s favorite Spoon song. And it is a brilliant song. I can say that because my friend John Clayton from Austin wrote it. I’m not sure if my dad knows that.”
“The Hardest Cut” explored how hero worship can “turn you off of religion” over slicing lighting and crisp riffs, with Daniel shaking his shaggy haircut against a lucid blue spotlight.
They Want My Soul’s “Inside Out” spangled red and blue, while the standing crowd up front had grown to three deep and joined Daniel in saluting the front keyboarder Gerardo Larios tinkling keys. A high energy instrumental heralded Transferance’s “Got Nuffin.” A man walking back to his seat in a newly-purchased Spoon sweatshirt saw some mates across the crowd and threw up the horns to them as he nodded his head.
Fluffy clouds spanned over to cirrus in the raspberry and purple sky while klieg bright stage lights flashed back at the last shot of the sunset. A slower song let the crowd catch its breath while the two old-timers took their seats then spotted a buddy walking past, who stopped to chat while they all shot a selfie. This unreleased new track “Love Right To Your Door” featured lyrics, “I’ve been working on a reservoir,” that resonated to the Jordanelle just over the range behind us.
Keyboardist Larios appeared in solo light for a “Crazy-Train”-esque intro to “The Underdog,” then couples stood up to dance in time to Daniel singing his ode to overlooked oracles. A man tilted back the last of his empty cup and the lime slice hit his nose, then he returned to applauding while Daniel yelled along to the song’s firework-loud ending.
“I Summon You” arrived as darkness hit with coolness. Four stacks of vertical lights pulsed while the crowd clapped along and Daniel held his guitar aloft in salute. “Don’t You Evah” brought blue lights and sonic zings, with Daniel’s singing counterbalanced by bassist Ben Trokan echoing back and forth. The older hippie stretched and raised his arms wide during the transition straight into “Do You,” and I held Claire’s hand as shifting spotlights flickered silhouettes.
“I Turn My Camera On” strutted with the steely veins of deliberate culture production while the man to my left contributed air-drumming. “Rent I Pay,” “Just like my brother would say,” continued mentions of familial associations and again brought Daniel to his knees, with his guitar tucked in a sweet spot on his bent thigh, strumming to shred the strings. The standing crowd had formed an orb six deep surrounding the stage, in darkness lit up blue like the Las Vegas Sphere before the band stepped off to loud applause.
Spoon didn’t keep the cheering crowd waiting long before Daniel returned with an acoustic guitar to cover Tom Petty’s “A Face in the Crowd.” “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” began when Daniel sang the first line refrain, “Life can be so fair,” as A Giant Dog had hinted that he would. A standing fan waved his fedora as his buddy filmed horizontal. A family with children stood up dancing as Daniel sang, “Brush your teeth for bed,” hinting at the borrowed time of an encore while guitars noodled under turquoise lights. “Blow out your ….. ooh.”
“The Fitted Shirt” is 23-year-old live classic that preceded the closing anthem “The Way We Get By.” Drums thumped and the piano jumped as Daniel lumped favored coping mechanisms into sharp vignettes as the weekend drew to a close. “Thank you so much, Utah. See you next time.”
At 9:36 the crowd began exiting to The Beatles’ “Good Night.” Many fans moved to the Cabriolet for a ride down the mountain, while we made our way to the parking garage with another couple. The man mentioned we’d have to pay for the parking at the machine before we left, until another man came into the portal and told us that someone had driven through the garage gate and broke it off, so we were free to leave without paying for parking. Rock ‘n’ roll.
As we headed up the mountain to Park City, Spoon traveled east with 13 further dates in their tour. Concerts on the Slopes will continue hosting events through the end of August.