Drake Tungsten "Chicago at Night"

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

So, I’d kind of forgotten about Drake Tungsten–otherwise known as the alter-ego of Britt Daniel during Spoon’s early years–then the iTunes Music Store goes and re-releases the 5-track EP Sixpence for the Sauces from 1996, and I did a search in my iTunes, and there it was. It’s slight, but provides some insight into Daniel’s songwriting stage in-between the essentially disowned Telephono and the remarkable Series of Sneaks. There’s still a lot of Pixies leftover, evidenced by the presence of the mutally covered “Do the Manta Ray”, and the periodic falsettos in “I Could Be Underground” showed Daniel was still developing his unique drawl from its Jonathan Richman origins. The main attraction here is a very rough version of “Chicago at Night” (mp3) that would, of course, make a celebrated appearance on Girls Can Tell five years hence. Spoon opened with it this past summer when I saw them in the city of big shoulders, reigniting my appreciation for the song. This version maintains the same structure as the mastered one, but with some primitive studio experimentation that highlights the Mellotron overtones.

Buy Sixpence for the Sauces from iTunes here.