As these things usually do, Everything At Once presents a skewed version of Spoon's history. Casual listeners can get by without hearing the band's first two albums Telephono and A Series of Sneaks and their least regarded album, 2010's Transference (none of which get a look-in here), and the band would prefer to steer the next potential super fan away from those albums while keeping the compilation concise. The selection is tilted disproportionately towards Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and They Want My Soul rather than consensus favourites Girls Can Tell and Kill the Moonlight. This might be the band's personal taste for their own work. When it comes to omitting the first two albums, the argument could be made those albums' comparative rawness would stand out, but it's harder to argue that "Anything You Want" or "All the Pretty Girls Go to the City" couldn't easily take the place of "Do You" and "Inside Out".
Purely on its merits as a collection of songs, Everything Hits At Once holds up. Quibbles over what could have been included or excluded only underscore the strength of Spoon's catalogue. Its sequence competently corrals a bunch of songs recorded over a 20 year period, but the title almost inadvertently alludes to one of its shortcomings; by design, everything hits not so much at once, but one after the other without reprieve. There's nothing wrong with that approach, but I prefer the push and pull of Spoon's albums, and you don't get that here without the minimalist atmospherics of songs such as "Paper Tiger" and "The Ghost of You Lingers" or acoustic numbers such as "10:20 AM" and "Vittorio E", but hopefully Everything Hits At Once will implore people to discover that for themselves.
