Spoon - ＂Jonathan Fisk＂

What this video is

Released in August 2002 alongside Kill the Moonlight, Spoon's fourth album for Merge Records, 'Jonathan Fisk' arrived at a pivotal moment in American indie rock when austere, rhythm-driven production was beginning to supplant the layered sonics of the late 1990s. The song's autobiographical subject matter — a middle-school bully who harassed songwriter Britt Daniel on his walk home — fit the era's appetite for…

Why it matters

A canonical artifact of early-2000s American indie rock minimalism. The track and its video together define the Kill the Moonlight aesthetic: raw, tightly wound, and willfully unpolished. The song has functioned as Spoon's signature live closer for years and was significant enough to be referenced…

The director

Ryan Junell is an Austin-based media director and designer who graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Plan 2 Honors Degree. He is a longtime member of the Austin creative community, founder of The SLOMO Video Festival (which toured 9…