Spoon is not one of those bands about whom even the true connoisseurs, or the determinedly hipper-than-thou, are likely to claim that their early work is superior to their mature output. But now that they've become one of the biggest and best of the indie rock world, it's still nice to hear where they came from. To that end, Merge has just rereleased their 1996 debut LP, "Telephono," and an early EP, "Soft Effects." This was back before Britt Daniel and Co. had started to incorporate the Beatles or Prince into their music and really sounded like a pretty standard-fare, if unusually kinetic, post-Pixies indie band. "Idiot Driver" is a brief and not particularly notable track from Telephono, but "Mountain to Sound," from the EP, is considerably meatier, a heavy, insistently repetitive track that prefigures some of their later droney, minimalist purity.
-- T.B.
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