I hate interviewing handsome men: I'm shy and this means I blush, cannot look at them in the eye when they speak so I watch the walls, I hardly say something and my mind simply switches itself off.
Maybe Britt Daniel is not what you properly call "a handsome man", but he's tall, very thin, his skin is clean and bright and his hair, even if messy, terribly blonde: he really looks like an angel and, for me, that makes things even worse.This is the interview. I apologize with you, dear reader, I've done all I could.

Are ten minutes ok for you?
They are.
I slowly pass him a sheet like it was a test, while I open my notes for a few questions.
What is this?
You tell me. (Basically, it's a letter that a Gerard Cosloy wrote to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation introducing the band)
Oh, this is what seemed as a bio.
Do you know this person?
The person who wrote it? Yes, he's a good friend of ours, he works at Matador Records. We've been friends for a lot of time and he has a way with words, he's very funny.
We have to have a bio for every album which basically describes the album, but I don't know why they call it bio because "bio" should talk about the band, but it seems more like it's an album description or a statement of where the band is at that moment.
Things are always so boring; we just try to come up with something a little bit more unusual.
So, this letter was not actually sent to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation.
I don't think it was. I don't think it was actually sent, but it's very funny.

First of all my congratulations: I've heard "Gimme Fiction" reached the no. 1 of the Billboard alternative chart.
The CMJ chart. It was good… Maybe we did some kind of alternative no. 1, I don't know. Maybe you're right.
Don't you care about things like that?
I do. I just don't know all of them. I know that it was no. 44 on the Billboard album chart and it was no. 1 at CMJ - the college radio chart - for several weeks, but I don't know about this alternative chart. Maybe there is one.
Did you expect these results after all this years? I know you had to finance yourself to have your records released in the past years.
Well, we've made this recent one ourselves too. It's good that way because when you pay for yourself beforehand then you bring it to a record label and you own it: you license it for a certain number of years. If you are on a major label and they help pay for the record, then they own it. So this is better. If you can pay for yourself, you should.

"Gimme Fiction" is the happiest record I've heard in a while. Though, someone claims it has some goth atmospheres. I was very surprised, I must say.
I didn't know we'd been thought of it as a dark album at all. When we were making it, it never crossed my mind. I think that, maybe, the character of the first two songs on the album paints a picture in a lot of people's mind - especially general audience listening to the record a few times - of what the album is all about.
Every review of the last album said this is all a minimalist album and the first two songs are very, very minimal. But, after that, they aren't all so minimal. I just think that the first couple of songs really paint a picture for some people.

This latest record has a brand new sound, compared to your previous records. How did you approach it?
I didn't do much that very differently. You certainly hear that the sound of Jim's (drummer Jim Eno is the other official member of Spoon) studio, where we record, gets progress on each album. A couple of albums aback has pretty low to mid fidelity and now, on this most recent one, pretty high fidelity. I think it's quite a studio development. As far as making, we didn't make it in a very different way from the last couple of records. It is just the character of the songs that makes an album feel like what it is.
So, this changing came very naturally.
Yes, very naturally.
You haven't thought: "Ok, let's play in this particular way."
No, not on the overall album thing. Sometime we'll be trying out each song and try to figure out how each one should be played: quiet with the piano or loud with the guitar? We try a bunch of different ways, but it's never like we sit down and say: "This album will grow up in this direction." It just doesn't work like that.

Where did you write this new record and how much did the place where you wrote your songs affect them?
It's hard to say because I don't know how the songs would sound otherwise. I know that, when I went to song-writing excursion down to Galveston, in Texas, just for the sole purpose of writing, I got lot of songs there because every day I was only doing that for about twelve hours a day and sometimes it was a little lonely and depressing, [smiles] maybe that affects the moods of some of the songs.

Though, your sound is really charmy and I do think, in Europe, you may achieve the same huge success you have in the States. I know I shouldn't ask you and it's a stupid question, but why isn't it like this?
I don't know.
It just happens… I think that our records can stand up against anybody making records these days. I think they're very good, as good as or better than the competition, but a lot of time it isn't about quality that determines how many people like your records. There are other factors.
Maybe you can tell me.
I don't know either, you deserve it. Maybe you need to have one of your songs in a commercial. It works!
Yes, maybe we should.
Oh, is it true that one of your tracks was used for the O.C. tv series soundtrack?
Yes. They just asked us and I don't know why. That show seems to gravitate towards whatever young bands are, whatever determines to be indie rock bands. I've never seen the show, but they asked if we wanted to do that and we said: "Ok". We don't have problems in loaning our songs to a tv show. We would not want loan our songs to the US Army, but a tv show is ok.

Ok, I see you're very tired. We've almost done. Last question.
I'm always very attracted by cd covers and titles: I consider them as a big part of the record itself. Would you explain yours? I think the cover you choose for "Gimme Fiction" is quite creepy.
Yes, maybe that's why people thought it was creepy. Maybe that's why they think it's dark. I found an artist (Shane McCabe) and I'd really liked him to design some record covers that I liked. I just came to him: "I want you to make something for us." He said he was thinking about doing this photo shoot to recreate this bizarre version of "Little Red Riding Hood" and I said: "I don't really know if I'm gonna like that", but he shot it anyway and once I saw some of the pictures he had taken and how he cropped them, I thought: "This is creepy, it works."
What about the title?
I thought it was a good title. I think that "gimme" is a great word for rock'n'roll. It's one of my favorite lyrics. "C'mon" is another great one, great rock'n'roll lyric. I just thought it sounded good: "Gimme Fiction".

Thursday watch the walls instead - it's Friday, I'm in love.

Milan, Transilvania Live Club - October 6, 2005. Thursday.