Britt Daniel @Sound Fix, Jan. 23rd

Yesterday, I coaxed Bestest Boy to accompany me up to Williamsburg to meet Julie for an in-store appearance by Britt Daniel, lead singer of Spoon. This was my first visit to the recently relocated Sound Fix Records, where in its old iteration, I had gone to just one free "in-store" there (the band Man Man, which was just plain nuts). I use quotes there because the old setup had a nice bar attached to the rear of the record shop, which kind of made it more conducive to getting into the gig mood as it was not in a store.

We first arrived at the shop at 5pm and saw no line for the 7pm announced start time, so we walked around and settled in for a pint at The Gutter, which was closer to our vibe than the manic Brooklyn Bowl, which felt overdone to me. Around 5:45 we decided to head back to the store, only to find the line winding around the block. Wow, people do like their free.

Britt performed by himself on a guitar and sounded great. I love that raspy quality his voice possesses. He played a short setlist of four songs, with two from the new album, Transference, and two from 2005's Gimme Fiction: "The Mystery Zone," "Written In Reverse," "The Beast and Dragon, Adored" and "I Summon You." Sweet.

While, yeah, it would have been nice to hear more than that, it was probably a blessing in disguise that we didn't have to stand there too long for only partial glimpses of Britt (though the acoustics were great). The new Sound Fix location, while perhaps grander in terms of CD display, seemed awkward for this Britt Daniel appearance, as it was packed to the gills, he was not on a platform of any sort, and there was a big column in the middle of the store, and I don't mean the 6'8" man standing in front of us. Plus, with the performance being right there amongst all the compact discs as opposed to the former bar setting, it was only painfully more apparent that Britt was there to shill for his band's newly released album as he concluded with an okay, who wants to buy some records?

Even though we like Spoon, and Britt's performance was good, and we could have bought the new album signed by him, we decided to ditch the crowd and head over to Fette Sau for some porky goodness. Oh yesssss...