Texas indie-rock institution Spoon are marking the 20th anniversary of their career-highlight album Kill the Moonlight with a limited-edition vinyl reissue. Set for release as part of Matador Records’ Revisionist History catalog series, the album’s 20th-anniversary edition will be its first time on colored (white, to be precise) vinyl. Matador has also re-upped a handful of KTM-era music videos, with new commentary from frontman Britt Daniel.
Daniel recalls of the video for hit KTM single “The Way We Get By”:
Here’s one of those videos where I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on. I remember we worked on a shot of me making a suggestive handoff of a seemingly nefarious package, and some espionage-like loose story that was to be bookended by a little performance done on the sidewalk without a permit. Shot in a few hours in Chinatown during a 19-day van tour where we had no days off, the package handoff sequence had to be removed from the edit because MTV deemed it too indicative of a drug deal. I’m not sure what happened to the rest of the story but this thing holds up pretty well. The video was directed by Steve Hanft who had among other things, and this is the truth, years earlier directed a movie I had never heard of called Kill The Moonlight. I thought I’d discovered that phrase in an early 19th century futurist manifesto. And well, I had. But so had he. Picture me trying to explain that to him on set when he thought our album referenced his movie. Steve had also shot the video for Beck’s song “Loser” and Beck put an album out one month after ours which had a song on it called Paper Tiger, as did Kill The Moonlight. That’s some universe type shit.
Spoon hit the road next week for the Lights, Camera, Factions Tour, their co-headlining U.S. run with Interpol, and support from Water From Your Eyes.
Revisit the “Small Stakes,” “The Way We Get By” and “Jonathan Fisk” videos below, and keep scrolling for Spoon’s 2008 Daytrotter session and a sneak peek at their 20th anniversary KTM reissue. You can preorder it here.
