Music being the most abstract of the popular arts, it is hard to know exactly why some bands succeed and others fail. This much we do know: Spoon was once a band teetering toward failure. It was the late '90s, and Spoon was playing competent post-punk in the tradition of Wire and the Pixies. And in the post-punk tradition, the group was widely ignored. After a two-month affiliation with a major label, Spoon had its contract revoked. The band was deemed not only hopelessly uncommercial but also hopelessly uninteresting.
Lead singer-songwriter Britt Daniel had a degree in radio, TV and...