Hey, uh, Britt? Are you going to eat that maraschino cherry? ‘Cause if not . . .

I think pretty much everything Britt Daniel touches is gold. (I mean that in the “quality” sense, not necessarily “gold record” sense, although I haven’t checked, so maybe Spoon’s recent records really have gone gold.) In any case, I’ll confess, I’m biased. So I had a feeling his new band project, Divine Fits (also featuring members of the New Bomb Turks and Wolf Parade), would be very not uncool. And sure enough, their album A Thing Called Divine Fits, released in August 2012, is great — even if it does sound for the most part like a new Spoon album (not bad if you’re a Spoon fan, of course). The musicianship is fantastic throughout, and if the members really did collaborate equally on the songs, they clearly have a similar world view when it comes to rock — in no way does it sound like a quickie, one-off recording session. It actually has me a little concerned about the future of Spoon — although as I guess I’ve hinted at in that first sentence above, Daniel is the guiding force in that to the point that it doesn’t seem likely to matter what band he wraps himself in. The music will still rock.

“Would That Not Be Nice” is probably one of the most Spoon-ish songs on the Divine Fits album, so maybe that’s why I like it so much. But whatever you call it, it’s a thumping good time — an instant classic. The lyrics are a bit cryptic, but they certainly work well with the song’s rhythm, and sometimes that’s all that matters:

There’s Cleopatra
Upon her throne
Come clean, ‘patra
Come come back home
I’ll be here waiting with basmati rice
And can you tell me now, would that not be nice?

Hey, yes, now that you mention it, I love basmati rice — so I guess it would be!