When Spoon was finishing its 2001 album Girls Can Tell, the band didn’t know what to do with “Chicago at Night,” which would close the record.
In an interview last week, drummer and co-founder Jim Eno told this story about what he and guitarist, singer, and chief songwriter Britt Daniel decided to do: “I never would have tried this, but Britt and I were so young, and we were just like, ‘Oh yeah, let’s do it.’ We had to turn all the mixes in for mastering. ... We have these two versions, and we like different things about each version ... . So Britt says, ‘Why don’t we use the left side of this mix and the right side of this mix?’”
So Eno broke out Pro Tools, put the left channel of one mix with the right channel of the other, and time-compressed one so they were the same length.
It was a moronic idea — a simple-minded, jokey cop-out.
And you can hear the strangely spectacular results on the record.
The Psychopathic Chicken (and Other Lessons of Evolution)