Here's to you, Britt Daniel.

Exquisitely tactful vocalist, unerringly consistent songsmith, and all-around awesome frontman Britt Daniel, you deserve every accolade you receive and so much more.

Ok, I'll admit, Spoon is my favorite band. My music taste has somewhat of a formalist slant. I appreciate expansive creativity and avant-garde boundary pushing, sure, but I really have a soft spot for musicians and artists who can artfully manipulate the formal constraints of classic pop and rock songwriting structures and assemble them into new, exciting and timeless shapes.* Spoon is a perhaps peerless example of such a band.

I heard recently that Matthew Perpetua of Fluxblog fame has a project to review one R.E.M. song every day for a year or something (and that Floodwatchmusic , another great blog, is doing the same for Rush(!)). Maybe I'll anatomize Spoon's catalog as well. I'd love to set out in clear and rational terms, with all the evidence I can muster, why I believe them to be truly (one of) the greatest band(s) of our generation.

*As an aside, I think the same sort of logic explains why I love "Ocean's Eleven"; the movie takes a familiar theme and and executes it with such wit, class and restraint that the end result has a transcendent sort of breezy magic, channeling the charisma and glamor of Old Hollywood.