All is Well
Artist: Spoonfork
Label: Gourmé! Records
10 tracks / 53:46
URL: www.spoonthefork.com

With apologies to Spoonfork, the review you are reading is nearly a year late.  Unfortunately part of that lateness is due to one simple fact:  I find little to care about one way or the other regarding All is Well.

In one sense, Spoonfork is a fun, clever indie-rock band.  Part garage, part stoner, part seemingly weird for the sake of weird. Think Lo-Fi Queens of the Stone Age if they had no budget and didn't give a flying fig about commercial success.  Yes, I just wrote flying fig.  There are lots of groovy, chunky riffs, abrupt time changes,  hypnotic repetition and in that sense, it works.

By the same token, many of the very qualities that define All is Well irritate me.  Hey!  Everything sounds "trashy" and fuzzy!  Our  vocals are run through layers of distortion!  This part sounds like circus music! We're so WEIRD man!  TRASH!  THEY'RE TRASHING OUR  RIGHTS!  THEY'RE TRASHING US!  HACK THE PLANET!  HACK THE PLANET!

(I probably am not the one to talk about weird as a -negative-quality...)

I don't hate Spoonfork, and listening to the album right this very second I even like them, but I can't get past my scoffing reaction to  the indie rock cliches.  Inevitably, indie snobs will dig Spoonfork's brand of cutlery.  If you can't be bothered with indie rock, All is Well won't change your mind.  Me, I've had the record for almost a  year and listened to it on purpose... once?  Once and a half?

Pretty sure I hit skip when songs come on iTunes, too. "YOUR GATEWAY TO MUSIC AND MORE FROM A CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE"  The thing about being a band looking for press:  you send out promo  cds -everywhere-.  Tollbooth receives material from bands in all  walks of life.  Often these bands are not "obviously" faith-based  artists, or not faith-based at all.  They just want reviews, man!   From a christian perspective, I have no idea if Spoonfork could be  
considered a faith-based artist.  I'd offer a perspective on the  album's themes but to be quite honest I have no idea what the hell  the songs are about, if they're about anything at all.  If it's the kind of thing that bothers you, they drop the f-bomb repeatedly in "The Undertaker."  Of course, they're Swedish; European Christians are not necessarily so uptight about profanity as we puritan North  Americans.  Wink wink.  Seriously though.  No idea.

Ryan Ro