Spoon takes Metacritic's 'best artist of the decade' award

Metacritic is the site that aggregates Film, Music, DVD and other reviews from all over the Web universe and brings it all under one roof to you, the discerning media hound, to see what the pro critics are writing about our modern cultural offerings. I love the site and use it often.

And the Austin band Spoon has just taken the site's award for top overall music artist of the decade. Here's Metacritic's criteria:

"We decided to highlight the top overall artists of the past 10 years by picking the artists who met the following three criteria:
(a) released at least 3 albums from 2000-09;
(b) at least two of those albums must be "great" (with a Metascore of 81 or higher); and
(c) the average (mean) Metascore for all of their releases from the decade must also be 81 or higher."

And according to this criteria, Spoon won. Does this mean that Spoon is in that dreaded "critic's fave" corner? Maybe. Metacritic was surprised, but in a good way. From the site: "The top 35 artists meeting all three criteria are displayed below (sorted by number of great albums, then by Metascore average), and the band topping the list was a surprise to us as well, albeit a pleasant one. The Austin, Texas indie-rock band Spoon may not be the most prolific band of the decade, but they were the most consistently great. From 2001’s stellar Girls Can Tell to 2007’s, well, stellar Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, the Britt Daniel-led group received accolades from the music press and music fans for their impeccable songwriting and addictive songs."

Here's the top five list:
Artist # Releases # Great Average Metascore
1 Spoon 4 4 85.3
2 Sigur Rós 4 4 83.5
3 Super Furry 6 4 82.5
4 Sleater-Kinney 3 3 86.3
5 White Stripes 4 3 84.8

And what timing! The new Spoon LP 'Transference' comes out in three weeks. The new single "written in Reverse" is out on iTunes. Get it.