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This is good news.  Spoon frontman Britt Daniel has been recording tracks, many of which he’s debuted live the past year, with producer Jon Brion at an Los Angeles studio.  They’re just demos, which means the full band will probably begin recording the followup to Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga sometime soon for a spring/summer 2010 release.

Jon, you’ll remember, produced Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga standout “The Underdog.”

“We’re writing together, which is different for me. I’ve never gone somewhere to write with someone. I wrote some things once with Miles Zuniga [of Austin’s Fastball], but that was more, ‘We need a verse, now a chorus.’ This is doing things with individual sounds, things that could become sections of songs.” In fact, Brion’s trademark is a playful sprawl, which seems at odds with Spoon’s purposeful sparsity. But the collaboration worked to a strong end on the one song Brion produced for Ga, the horn-driven, standout first single “The Underdog.”

“Jon plays every instrument. He has strategies for putting everything together. He calls this throwing paint against the wall. It’s coming up with ideas.”

But it’s not expected to produce a full album anytime soon. Daniel plans to convene the band in early March in a studio in Portland, his home-away-from-Austin for the past four years. He predicts he might have a half a record’s worth of songs ready by then. And he might like how they sound with the band. Or he might not.

[Texas Monthly]