Spoon and Rafter

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Never ones to sit still, Spoon and Rafter marked another shift for the band. While still containing echoes of singer-songwriters and alt-country, the record represents a Technicolor expansion of their palette that utilizes electronics, glockenspiels, melodica, and Beatlesque production.

“It’s quite a bonkers album, really,” says Ian. “By that stage we had our own studio again on the north Cornish coast in the UK. We had time to pick up different instruments and just faff around. It was quite a process, but it’s my favourite record we did.”

“We sort of entered our Beach Boys phase of Mojave 3,” says Neil, “where we became more interested in different instrumentation and a fuller sound. Thanks to Mark [Van Hoen] it was the first time we used an early Pro Tools system to edit stuff together, so some of the tracks are much longer and more orchestrated, like ‘Bluebird of Happiness,’ which has three different sections that were all recorded separately and then chopped together.”

And while Mojave 3 had few instances of breaking into mainstream culture, album cuts “Bluebird of Happiness” and “Bill Oddity” were poppy enough to both be featured in 2003 episodes of The O.C.