I saw Spoon one year ago at an outdoor festival in Chicago. I'd never seen them before, and I had extremely high expectations of their performance, including a misguided assumption that they'd play one of my favorite all-time songs, "Everything Hits at Once." Well, the song was not played, tears were shed, and the show ended up being somewhat disappointing overall; they sounded alright, but I felt the set was too rushed, like they were just blazing through their songs at top speed. Britt Daniel seemed to be anal and frustrated about the band's equipment, and I walked away from that show feeling somewhat betrayed by what was one of my favorite bands, calling out demands for an apology all the way back to the car to anyone around me who cared to listen. It took me awhile before I could put a Spoon album on my stereo again. Luckily, time heals all wounds, and when I learned that Spoon was going to tour this summer before the release of their next album, I decided to give Britt and the band the chance to redeem themselves at the Metro. I figured a year, a new venue, and some new songs to showcase could make all the difference. And what a difference it made, as this show proved to be about a hundred times better than last summer's; I walked away with renewed faith in the band and plenty of excitement for the new album.

After opening up with a new song and then launching into a couple of Girls Can Tell favorites with "Lines in the Suit" and "Me and the Bean," Spoon clearly appeared to be much more relaxed on stage than they were during the aforementioned show a year ago. They were having fun, drinking beer on stage, and very noticeably taking their time with the songs, rather than just rushing through a setlist. The setlist itself was almost perfect; with a heavy focus on Girls Can Tell (fine by me, as it's my favorite of the three), Spoon hit just about every song I could have wanted to hear, most importantly including "Everything Hits at Once," this time producing tears of joy rather than tears of anger. Of the new songs Spoon debuted from their forthcoming album, the most impressive was "I Summon You," performed by Britt solo during the encore and currently available on the Spoon website in demo form. Britt sounded great on his own and left me curious and excited as to how the song will eventually sound with the full band. I can only hope the rest of the new album will live up to the quality songwriting of "I Summon You," so I don't have to deal with yet another crisis of faith with this band in September.

Spoon ended its set with everyone's favorite song about a grade school bully, "Jonothan Fisk." I left the show with a feeling of total satisfaction from a great performance (finally) and the knowledge that one of my favorite bands had redeemed itself in my eyes. Apology accepted, Britt.