Some Kind of Mediocre Genius

I was soaking in the sun at the local watering hole on a rare spring afternoon in Austin when an oddly familiar mop of dirty blond hair turned the corner of the bar patio. Within a split second, I put together that the unmistakable mop belonged to Britt Daniel, Austin local and lead singer of the band Spoon. I rarely remember the lyrics of Spoon songs, but the guitar riffs are memorable, so I joked with my friend that we should hum the riff of Got Nuffin while walking past him. 20 minutes and one more drink later, I was in the bathroom humming the tune to myself while texting friend of the 'sletter and fellow 2000s rock enthusiast Drew Austin about the present ongoings. As I put the phone away and looked down at the sink, I saw the boots of the man who opened the stall to the right of the sink. I was blocking his way to the exit, so I rushed through, washing my hands, and turned to the napkin dispenser next to the man. Once again, at the corner of my eye, I noticed a mop of dirty blonde hair, and that's when I realized I had just sung to Britt Daniel, who was inside the stall. I'll never know if he avoided eye contact because of the social contract of never looking another man in the eye in the bathroom or if he was embarrassed for me and my humming.

Over the next week, in my effort to find more Spoon songs to hum, I started listening to Spoon albums front to back while reading the Pitchfork review for each. Spoon has been around for 30 years and doesn't have a single album that is rated less than 7 by Pitchfork. They also don't have any that are rated 9 either. Producing one album rated 7 is good enough. Producing ten albums rated somewhere between 7 and 9 is some kind of mediocre genius. They are also a band that has never been in the limelight for rockstar antics or melodrama. They have never been scenesters. Looking back, it's easy to see all the paths they could have taken but did not. They could have been players in the NYC indie sleaze scene in the 2000s that coincided with one of their best albums. After releasing 4 consistently good records in the 2000s, they could have chased some grand experimental theory and put out something orthogonal to their catalog. But, no, they just kept chipping away, self-aware of what they were good at while pushing the boundaries in the small ways they felt confident they could.

Every Spoon record retains the same underlying backbone while also sounding new. 2017's Hot Thoughts, for example, is heavy on electronic production but still manages to sound like their other records. In an interview, Britt Daniel mentioned that the latest album's sound came from touring. They found that the existing band members were good at live performances and rehearsing, so they decided to put out a classic rock album that returned them to their roots, since that's what seemed to work. This reveals something about how Spoon works - Yes and-ing themselves into a solid record instead of chasing grandiosity or genius. They are like the Larry David of rock - could have faded away after Seinfeld but keep consistently putting out good but not great work. Both these artists figured out sometime early in their careers that they are not one in a million geniuses but that their genius could accumulate over time. A particular quality in quantity. Isaac Asimov, who published over 40 novels and several hundred short stories, is someone else who can be put in the same category of genius that reveals itself in quantity. It's also a kind of genius that I've only come to appreciate in my 30s. I would have pretentiously mocked Spoon's perceived mediocrity if I had run into Britt Daniel in my early 20s.

Sheer quantity in itself is not a sign of quality, of course, as shown by the torrent of content that we are exposed to daily these days. Even the mediocre geniuses are not immune to this. Spoon recently put out a reworked record of their latest album. About this, Britt Daniel's commented that record labels always want more content these days right after an album comes out. The reworked album is a Pitchfork 6.4, rightfully so. A blemish on the Spoon catalog.

Yesterday I was walking along shoal creek. On the other side of the creek is a park that was hosting a huge all-day event. I could sense the tempo of the activities on the other side - the gradual rise of tension and activity as I walked parallel to the park, and all of it eventually fading away as I walked past. The walk felt like a Spoon record, the guitar riffs always flirting with chaos but never really giving into it, content to observe what the other side might reveal without ever being part of it.

For further reading on the virtues of mediocrity, check out this essay series by Venkatesh Rao

If premature optimization is the root of all evil, mediocrity is slightly evil.

Mediocrity is the courage to be ordinary.