Spoon - Portland, OR

It's only fitting that one of the best minimalist rock bands in recent years sold out Portland's gorgeous Crystal Ballroom for a minimally priced ticket ($9.47).

While this year's Gimme Fiction does boast a bigger sound when compared to their 2002 masterpiece Kill The Moonlight, I'd still heard reports that the band had a difficult time sounding thick and full in a live setting. Maybe it was the acoustics of the venue, or the fact that the ballroom was literally full of bodies, but the band sounded fantastic.

One of the most compelling frontmen in rock today, enough cannot be said about Britt Daniel's hybridization of Elvis Costello's punky nervousness and seemingly effortless Jagger swagger. The man is a bona fide rock star and knows it. He's the kind of guy who removes his sport jacket to reveal a slick white button up after tearing apart Girls Can Tell's "The Fitted Shirt." Daniel also has a lot more fun with feedback onstage than he does on the band's albums. The droning washes of guitar tastefully placed throughout the evening's rendition of "Paper Tiger" made the song 50 times creepier and added to the cacophony of the set closing "My Mathematical Mind," perhaps the loosest song in Spoon's catalog.

The radio station promo show proved that this band is as capable live as they are in drummer Jim Eno's studio (who I would also like to add is sickeningly underrated, look no further than "30 Gallon Tank"). I've described Kill The Moonlight as the only album I own that I immediately want to replay in its entirety after a complete listen. Even though the set was just under 90 minutes, I left the Crystal Ballroom feeling more fulfilled than I did earlier this year after seeing a show of similar length from the other American masters of minimalist rock (The White Stripes). Spoon isn't one of those bands that "you need to see live in order to get." But it wouldn't hurt if you did.